LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
"PR U75* 

Chap, :_ Copyright No. 

HheIf.--i.flL5. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A STUDY OF ENGLISH PROSE 
WRITERS 

By J. SCOTT CLARK 

Professor of English in the Northwestern University. 
8vo. Net, $2.00. 



~> 



" We commend it strongly to teachers of English." — 
The Dial. 

" Professor Clark's book is to the highest degree 
definite and practical. Even the pupil most lacking in 
literary instinct must carry away from the course here 
outlined something more than glaring generalizations." 
—Journal of Pedagogy. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers. 



A STUDY OF 

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 

POETS 

A LABORATORY METHOD 



BY 
r 

J. SCOTT CLARK, LlTT.D. 

a 

AUTHOR OF "A PRACTICAL RHETORIC," "A STUDY OF ENGLISH PROSE 

WRITERS," ETC., AND PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 

AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 



" Le Style c'est I'homme." — Buffon 

" The whole art of criticism consists in learning to 
know the human being who is partially revealed to us 
in his written and spoken words." — Leslie Stephen 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1900 



O^ 



2-- 



63359 

V\. i brnj y of Cond'-esB 
, VtfMi KfcUitfEO 

; OCT 19 1900 

CopynjrM entry 

bt cv«r copy. 

OKOH WVISION, 
NOV 20 1900 



A 6 



Copyright, 1900, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




TROW DIRECTORr 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



To 

MY PUPILS 

AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 

WITH APPRECIATION 

OF THEIR 

APPRECIATION 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Geoffrey Chaucer . . . . . . . i 

Edmund Spenser 38 

John Milton 89 

John Dryden 131 

Alexander Pope ........ 163 

Robert Burns 208 

William Cowper 252 

John Keats ......... 289 

Percy Bysshe Shelley 328 

George Gordon, Lord Byron 372 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge . . . . .411 

William Wordsworth 452 

Ralph Waldo Emerson ...... 497 

William Cullen Bryant 530 

James Russell Lowell 574 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .... 616 

Robert Browning . . . . . . . 658 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

John Greenleaf Whittier ..... 714 

Alfred Tennyson , . . . . . -755 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 805 

INDEX 847 



PREFACE 

The kindly reception accorded to the author's " Study of 
English Prose Writers," published in 1898, seems to warrant 
the appearance of this complementary volume, which was 
foreshadowed in the preface to the " Prose Writers." As the 
method involved is somewhat distinctive, it seems wise to 
make some repetitions from that preface. A certain amount 
of repetition will be found, also, in the chapters on Milton, 
Lowell, and Holmes. 

It is generally admitted by teachers of English that, after 
one has learned to avoid the common violations of clearness, 
force, precision, and the other requisites of good style, he may 
best improve his own use of the mother-tongue by studying 
the English classics. But how is one to study the English 
classics so as to obtain positive and appreciable results ? This 
volume represents an attempt to answer that question so far as 
it applies to the poets concerned. Certainly, the question has 
not been answered satisfactorily by the numerous text-books 
on English literature, nor by the countless editions of English 
classics " with notes." To memorize biographical data or the 
generalities and negations of criticism, or to trace out obscure 
allusions or doubtful meanings, is certainly not to study a 
writer in any broad or fruitful way. While the method here 
offered may not be ideal, it is not merely theoretical. It has 
been rigidly and continuously tested in the author's class-room 
during the last twelve years by means of a partially developed 
manuscript, printed privately for the use of his own pupils, 
and again in his published volume on the " Prose Writers." 

In a word, the method consists in determining the particu- 

vii 



Vlli PREFACE 

lar and distinctive features of a writer's style (using the term 
style in its widest sense), in sustaining this analysis by a very 
wide consensus of critical opinion, in illustrating the particu- 
lar characteristics of each writer by carefully selected extracts 
from his works, and in then requiring the pupil to find, in the 
works of the writer, parallel illustrations. 

The method grew out of dissatisfaction with results ob- 
tained under the old ways of teaching English and out of the 
conviction that such a revolution as has taken place in the 
manner of studying all branches of natural science during the 
last quarter-century is both possible and desirable in the study 
of English. Just as the pupil has learned to study oxygen and 
electricity and protoplasm, and not merely what someone has 
written about these, so he must learn to study the masterpieces 
of style themselves and not merely what someone has written 
about them. Moreover, as the student of chemistry, phys- 
ics, or biology must have a hand-book or a set of tables to 
show him how to go to work, so the student of English clas- 
sics must have a hand-book to show him how to go to work. 
This volume is offered as such a hand-book for the poets of 
generally accepted rank except Shakespeare. 

It is a plausible objection to the method here presented 
that it is unscientific because it seems to apply the old scho- 
lastic dictum, " First learn what is to be believed," and be- 
cause it follows a deductive rather than an inductive order. 
The reply is that the pupil must have some guidance, and 
that "every one knows more than any one." It is believed 
that the consensus of criticism here offered is sufficiently wide 
to annul any charge of mere individual preference. To ask 
an ordinary undergraduate to study an English classic without 
giving him some specific directions, is as fruitless as to ask him 
to fly. Moreover, it will be seen that the method here offered 
is really inductive and scientific ; for the pupil is encouraged 
to discover, in any writer under consideration, any other dis- 
tinctive characteristic for which he can find clear illustrations 



PREFACE IX 

besides those named in the analysis found in this book. After 
a class has had sufficient experience in following the method 
here presented, it may be wise and feasible to ask them to do 
independent critical work; but born critics are as rare as born 
chemists. 

Among the results obtained from this method are an in- 
crease in the breadth, accuracy, and idiomatic character of the 
pupil's vocabulary; the development, in his style, of such 
graces as chaste imagery, suspense, point, smoothness, rhythm, 
and a greater predominance of the Anglo-Saxon element ; the 
development of an intelligent critical habit ; and last, but per- 
haps most important, the creation of a real hunger for the 
best literature and the initiation of the pupil into the real life 
and spirit of the great masters of style. The central idea of 
this volume is found in the quotation from Leslie Stephen 
given on the title-page : " The whole art of criticism consists 
in learning to know the human being who is partially revealed 
to us in his written and spoken words." 

The biographical outline prefixed to the discussion of each 
writer is intended simply as a means of review, that the reader 
may get his historical bearings, so to speak, before beginning 
his critical work. Those who desire more minute biogra- 
phies will find them in the encyclopaedias and those best of 
all biographies, the published letters of the writers concerned. 
The biographies of the earlier writers here discussed are based 
on Leslie Stephen's invaluable " Dictionary of National Biog- 
raphy ; ' ' the later ones are based on a careful review of each 
writer's correspondence. The bibliographies also prefixed to 
the several discussions are the result of some research. No 
subject needs the services of the professional bibliographer 
more than criticism, yet hitherto it has been strangely and 
almost entirely neglected. In the nature of the case, the best 
criticism is not to be found in complete volumes nor even in 
complete chapters or paragraphs. It is scattered sparsely 
through a vast amount of biography and general comment, 



X PREFACE 

and is often found in books whose titles give no hint of criti- 
cal contents. It is believed that the bibliographies here given 
will be found both helpful and somewhat exhaustive. Every 
book listed has been conscientiously examined, besides a vast 
number of volumes and periodical articles whose titles seemed 
to promise possible criticism, but which were found to contain 
only biography or the generalities and negations of criticism. 
Only those books and articles are listed that contain positive 
and specific criticism. In general, the arrangement of the 
books in the bibliographies is somewhat in the order of their 
importance. An effort has been made to quote all the emi- 
nent critics who have written about the writers concerned. 
Both the critical comments and the illustrations found in the 
body of the chapters have been taken directly from the orig- 
inal sources. 

While this volume is not intended for use without constant 
reference to the works of the writers treated, and while it is 
intended, primarily, as a text-book for advanced pupils in 
English, it is believed that it will be found not devoid of in- 
terest to the general reader, even if used without reference to 
companion volumes of literature. 

In conclusion, the author desires to acknowledge his in- 
debtedness to the various librarians mentioned in the preface 
to his " Study of English Prose Writers" and also to the 
members of his " seminary " in English at Northwestern Uni- 
versity, who have given material aid in verifying the bibli- 
ographies and the quotations. The omission of Shakespeare 
from this volume is justified on the ground that a proper dis- 
cussion of "the myriad-minded one" will require in itself, 
if not an entire volume, the larger part of one. It is the 
author's purpose to complete this series of "studies M by the 
addition of such a volume, for which the material is already 

in hand. r 

J. o. C 

Northwestern University, 
Evanston, III., April, 1900. 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 



While the author does not assume to teach the teachers 
who may use this volume as a text-book, it is hoped that a 
detailed statement of the method of use found most fruitful in 
his own classes will not appear pedantic. In order to attain 
the ends enumerated in the preface, it has been his custom to 
assign beforehand to each member of a class a specific section 
(usually about forty pages) of some work of the particular 
writer to be studied at the time and to give the following 
directions to pupils : — 

i. Read carefully the section assigned to you, and observe 
critically every word, neither very long nor obsolete, that 
impresses you as not found in the vocabularies of ordinary 
writers and speakers, especially such words as do not belong 
to your own habitual vocabulary. Select the best ten such 
words, and write them after the figure i in your class-report, 
which is to be left on the instructor's desk at the opening of 
the class-session. 

2. Observe carefully every case of especial accuracy or deli- 
cacy in the use of words, and record the best five cases oppo- 
site the figure 2 in your class-report, giving enough of the 
context in every case to make the accuracy or delicacy ap- 
parent. 

3. Observe every distinct idiom, and record, opposite the 
figure 3, your best five cases. 

4. Observe every rhetorical figure, and index, opposite the 
figure 4, the page and line where each of the best five figures 
is to be found. 

5. Index, opposite the figure 5, the best three cases of sus- 
pense (rhetorical period) to be found in your section. 

6. Index, opposite the figure 6, the best three cases of 
point (epigram, antithesis, balance, etc.), if such be found. 

7. Index, opposite the figure 7, the best three cases of 
smooth connection found. Observe especially the connection 
between paragraphs. 

xi 



Xll SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

8. Index, opposite the figure 8, the best three cases of sim- 
plicity, if such be found. Define simplicity, for this purpose, 
as the use of easy, conversational words and constructions. 

9. Name the writer's favorite metrical form or forms, giv- 
ing both foot and verse. 

10. Now determine, approximately, in the following man- 
ner, the percentage of Anglo-Saxon words employed by the 
given writer : 

Add the whole number of words on any full page taken at 
random, and use the sum for the denominator of a fraction. 
Then add the words on that page that are not apparently de- 
rived from Latin or Greek, and use the sum for the numerator 
of your fraction ; now reduce the fraction to decimal terms, 
and the result will be the approximate one sought. Of course, 
the accuracy of the result thus obtained will depend on the 
pupil's knowledge of foreign languages, but the ordinary col- 
lege student knows enough of Latin, at least, to make this 
exercise practicable and beneficial. 

Now read carefully the analysis of the writer under consid- 
eration, to be found in this volume, until you shall have 
gained from the comments and illustrations a clear idea of 
each of his particular characteristics. Then review the section 
assigned you from the writer's works, find there the best three 
illustrations you can of each of the particular characteristics, 
and index in your class-report the best illustrations found for 
each point, numbering according to the numbers given in the 
text-book. If your section does not afford illustrations of all 
the particular characteristics, obtain these from any of the 
writer's other works available so far as you have time. 

Finally, copy at the end of your class-report at least one 
hundred words consisting of the finest and brightest short pas- 
sages and quotable expressions to be found in what you have 
read. 

If an average of forty i2mo pages from any writer be as- 
signed to every pupil, the ordinary college upper-classman 
will accomplish the work outlined above in about five hours 
of faithful application — that is, enough to entitle him to an 
ordinary credit of two, perhaps three, week-hours. The work 
may be divided and considered at two or more class -sessions, 
or the complete reports may be considered at one time and 
credit be given accordingly. The number of illustrations 
of each point in a writer required from each pupil is, of 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS Xlll 

course, arbitrary. The numbers suggested have been found 
practicable. 

The recitation-hour is occupied in comparing the various 
pupils' reports, listening to several illustrations of each of the 
particular characteristics, emphasizing the best cases under the 
ten general characteristics, and in answering many questions 
incident to the discussion. It is the author's practice to con- 
sider the ten general characteristics at one recitation, calling 
for definitions of selected words under point i, and comment- 
ing at length on the illustrations offered of accuracy and deli- 
cacy in meaning. A second recitation on each writer is then 
devoted to a discussion of the particular characteristics and to 
the quotations. Written exercises are also required, at inter- 
vals, in which every pupil is expected to make accurate use, 
in sentences of his own invention, of the rare words selected 
previously from the various writers. This method, as a whole, 
has never failed to stimulate interest. 

One difficulty confronts the teacher who would have his 
pupils study the English classics by this or any other method ; 
namely, the lack of proper material in duplicate. To use a 
scientific, that is to say, a laboratory method, one must have 
material corresponding in variety and duplication to that pro- 
vided at each table in a chemical laboratory ; but few school- 
boards are yet willing to give to the teacher of English equal 
facilities with his colleague in chemistry or biology. The use 
of the ordinary book of "selections" is a delusion and a 
snare. As well expect to get a fair idea of the Atlantic by 
examining a pint bottle of its water. 

Three methods of meeting this exigency have been em- 
ployed by the author ; none fruitless, but of varying value. 
First, one may have every pupil obtain a cheap edition of 
some complete work of every writer to be studied during a 
given period, and may then assign the same in sections, dupli- 
cating according to the circumstances. The numerous cheap 
editions of detached works published within recent years make 
this plan feasible without unduly burdening the pupils by the 
expense. Many years' use of this method has proved its prac- 
ticability. The only serious objection lies in the fact that 
often no single work of a writer gives a sufficiently broad 
view of his style. For example, characteristics of Goldsmith 
to be found plentifully in his plays and essays are not to be 
found in the "Vicar of Wakefield." Of course, the ideal 



XIV SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

and the just way would be for the school to own the works 
required in sufficient duplicate and then to charge, if neces- 
sary, a small fee, as is done in the laboratories of natural sci- 
ence, for the use and wear of these materials. 

The second method is to have each pupil own the complete 
works of some one writer to be studied, and then to rotate 
these books through the class. This method secures the broad 
view lacking in the first, but it is cumbrous, sometimes irritat- 
ing, and it makes concentration of attention in the class-room 
impossible — since no two pupils may be studying the same 
writer at the same time. 

The third, and by far the best method yet found, involves 
more preliminary work and expense than may, perhaps, be 
expected of every teacher. A set of books, numerous enough 
to accommodate his present and probable classes, has been 
made by the author by taking the complete works of each 
of the twenty writers here treated, in sufficient duplications 
to make an average of about forty pages for each pupil. 
These have been divided into sections, making the divis- 
ions at the beginnings of chapters, and then the various piles 
of twenty sections each have been rebound into strong, 
durable volumes. The result is a series of books, each differ- 
ent from the rest, numbered consecutively, and all together 
including the complete works of every writer to be studied. 
These books are owned by the teacher or by the school, and 
are leased to the pupil, under fixed conditions, for a fee suf- 
ficient to keep the books in repair. Thus the class, as a 
whole, have the widest view of the writer's style, and the 
objections to the first two methods are overcome. The first 
method is practicable everywhere, and is, on the whole, very 
satisfactory, especially with classes of moderate size. The 
second is hardly to be recommended ; the third is almost 
ideal. 



CHAUCER, I34o(?)-i400 

Biographical Outline. — Geoffrey Chaucer, born prob- 
ably in 1340 ; father, John Chaucer, a well-to-do, respect- 
able vintner living in Thames Street, London ; of Chaucer's 
life until 1357 nothing is known; he acquires a liberal edu- 
cation, but where he studies is not known; in 1357 he 
appears as a page in the household of the Duke of Clar- 
ence, second son of Edward III. ; here he continues for about 
eight years, and sees much of the world ; in 1359 he " bears 
arms," and takes part in an expedition into France, but no 
fighting is done ; he is taken prisoner at Retiers in Brittany 
and is ransomed by the King of England ; in 1366 he mar- 
ries a lady in service upon the Queen, of the family of Roet, 
Christian name Philippa, but the marriage proves unhappy ; 
one son, Thomas, is born to them ; on June 20, 1367, 
Chaucer receives, " for good service," a pension from the 
King (amount unknown) ; he is called at this time a yeoman 
of the king's chamber ; in 1369 he is campaigning again in 
France; from June to September, 1370, he is abroad in the 
King's service. The years 1359-72 constitute the first lit- 
erary period of Chaucer's life ; this period shows the influ- 
ence of the French poets, and is first represented by " The 
Boke of the Duchesse," written in 1369 ; many spurious 
writings attributed to Chaucer are found in this period ; in 
1372, as a member of a public commission, he visits Genoa 
and Florence and meets Boccaccio; in 1373 he returns to 
England. 

In April, 1374, he receives as a pension a daily pitcher of 
wine for life ; this afterward is commuted to twenty marks ; 
June 8, 1374, he is appointed comptroller of the customs 



2 CHAUCER 

and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of 
London ; June 13th he receives from the Duke of Lancas- 
ter a grant of ^10 a year for life ; November 8, 1375, he ob- 
tains a grant of custody of the lands and person of Edmund 
Staplegate of Kent, which brings him about ^104 ; July 12, 
1376, he receives from the King ^71 4s. 6d., being the 
price of certain forfeited wool ; a pound in Chaucer's day 
was worth about twelve pounds of current English money 
to-day; during 1374-86 he lives in a dwelling-house above 
the gate of Aldgate; late in 1376 he is appointed, with Sir 
John Burley, to discharge some secret service abroad ; in 
February, 1377, he is sent with Sir Thomas Percy on an- 
other secret mission into Flanders; early in 1378 he is in 
France; he is sent into Lombardy in May, 1378, when the 
name of the poet John Gower appears as one of the attorneys 
in charge of the office of comptroller during Chaucer's absence; 
Chaucer and Gower become intimate friends, but their friend- 
ship is afterward broken by quarrels; in May, 1382, Chaucer 
is appointed comptroller of the petty customs in the port 
of London, during the King's pleasure, with permission to 
employ a deputy; in 1386 he is elected Knight of the shire 
for Kent; at the close of 1386, on account of political dis- 
turbances, he loses both of his offices. The years 1372-86 
constitute Chaucer's second literary period, which shows the 
marked influence of Dante and other Italians, especially the 
Florentines; with the exception of the " House of Fame," 
written about 1380, Chaucer abandons during this period the 
octosyllabic couplet, and principally uses the heroic coup- 
let ; he writes the " Assembly of Foules " in 1375, " Troi- 
lus and Criyseyde " about 1380, and begins the "Legend 
of Good Women" about 1382, but never completes it; his 
wife is thought to have died in 1387. 

In April, 1388, he goes on his famous pilgrimage to Can- 
terbury ; in May of this year, because of great financial dis- 
tress, he sells two of his pensions to one John Sealby ; in 



CHAUCER 3 

1389 Chaucer is appointed clerk of the King's works at the 
palace of Westminster, at the Tower of London, at the castle 
of Berkhampstead, at the King's manors of Kennington, El- 
tham, Clarendon, Sheen, Byfleet, Childern Langley, and 
Feckenham, and at the mews for the King's falcons at Char- 
ing Cross ; this work he is permitted to execute by deputy ; 
in July, 1390, he is ordered to procure workmen and material 
for the repair of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and is also 
made a member of a commission to repair the banks of the 
Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich ; he shows him- 
self unable successfully to manage these public affairs ; in 
1 39 1 he is dismissed from his clerkship, but is immediately 
appointed, together with one Richard Brittle, as forester of 
North Petherton Park, Somersetshire; in 1397 Chaucer is 
appointed sole forester; in 1394 he obtains from King Rich- 
ard a pension of ^50 for life; through carelessness in the 
management of his business affairs he is so often sued for debt 
that the King takes him for two years under his special pro-' 
tection ; in October, 1398, Chaucer receives another grant 
of a tun of wine daily; October 3, 1399, four days after 
Henry IV. comes to the throne, in response to Chaucer's ap- 
peal to the King entitled the " Compleint of my Purse," he 
receives an additional pension of ^26 13s. 4^/., to be paid 
annually ; be leases a house situated in the garden of the 
Lady Chapel, Westminster, and makes it his home ; he dies 
October 25, 1400, and is buried in the " Poets' Corner " in 
Westminster Abbey. The years 1 386-1 400 constitute the 
third literary period of Chaucer's life ; he begins the great 
work of this period, the " Canterbury Tales," in 1387, and 
completes the greater part by the close of 1393 ; he writes 
also during this period " V Envoy a Scogan," " Z' Envoy 
a Bukton," and a " Balade de Vilage sanz Peinture." 



4 CHAUCER 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON CHAUCER. 

Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

3: 291-366. 
Lounsbury, T. R., "Studies in Chaucer." New York, 1892, Harper, 

3 vols., v. index. 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets." London, 1881, Macmillan, 1 : 1-81. 
Shairp, J. C, " Poetic Interpretation of Nature." Edinburgh, 1877, 

Douglass, 151-162. 
Hazlitt, William, "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, 

Bell, 26-45. 
Morley, H., " English Writers." London, 1890, Cassell, 5: 83-347. 
Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, n. d., Ward & 

Downey, 1-18. 
Brooke, Stopford, "English Literature." New York, n. d., American 

Book Co., 42-49. 
Godwin, William, "Life of Geoffrey Chaucer." London, 1804, Daw- 
son, 4 vols., v. index. 
Arnold, T. , "A Manual of English Literature." Boston, 1885, Ginn 

& Heath, 25-34 and 376-381. 
• Hunt, Leigh, "Wit and Humor." London, 1875, Smith, Elder & Co., 

66-110. 
Greene, J. R., "History of the English People." New York, 1879, 

Harper, 1 : 503-509. 
Ward, A. W., "The Life and Works of Chaucer." New York, 1880, 

v. index. 
Clarke, C. C, "Riches of Chaucer." London, 1835, E. Wilson, 1- 

157. 

Lord, John, "Beacon Lights of History." New York, 1886, Fords, 

Howard & Hulbert, 3 : 59-91. 
Phillips, M. G., A "Popular Manual of English Literature." New 

York, 1893, Harper, 1 : 31-79. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & MacMillan, 

1 : 81-113. 
Taine, H. A., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Holt, 1 : 99-101 and 121-150. 
Minto, William, " Characteristics of English Poets. " Edinburgh, 1874, 

Blackwood, 1-58. 
Howitt, William, " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 

1847, Harper, 1 : 1-14. 
Beers, H. A., "From Chaucer to Longfellow." New York, 1894, 

Fiood & Vincent, 24-30. 



CHAUCER 5 

Warton, T., "History of English Poetry." London, 1840, Ward & 

Lock, 2 : 127-131. 
Skeat, W. W., " The Student's Chaucer." New York, 1895, Macmil- 

lan, p. 13. 
Campbell, Thomas, "Specimens of the British Poets." Philadelphia, 

1869, Lippincott, 65-75. 
Belgravia, 48: 34-46 and 160-174 (H. R. Haweis). 
English Illustrated Magazine, 1 : 733-746 (Alfred Ainger). 
Macmillaris Magazine, 24 : 266-279 (Stopford Brooke) ; 27 : 3^3-393 

(F. J. Furnivall). 
Atlantic Monthly, 40 : 592-600 (T. R. Lounsbury). 
Dublin University Magazine, 92: 26-40 (H. R. Haweis). 
Athenaum, 1894, i: 742-837, and 1892, 2: 253 (W. W. Skeat). 
Dial {Chicago), 17: 260 (Hiram Corson); 12: 351 (O. F. Emerson). 
Academy, 46 : 153 and 195 ; and 33 : 292 and 307 (W, W. Skeat). 
Quarterly Review, 180: 521 (VV. W. Skeat). 
North American Review, 111 : 155 (J. R. Lowell). 
Nation, 48: 527 and 49 : 10 (T. R. Lounsbury). 
Dial (Boston), 4: 297-303 (H. D. Thoreau). 
Temple Bar, 54 : 196-198 (R. H. Home). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Naturalness — Artlessness — Freshness. — 

" Chaucer is the most natural, as Pope is the most artificial, 
of the great English poets. He not only observes truly and 
feels keenly, but he keeps his feeling free and unspoiled by 
his knowledge of books and of affairs. . . . The study 
of books, in an age when study so often led to pedantry, left 
him as free and human as it found him. . . . His sim- 
plicity is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet uncon- 
cern with which he says his best things is peculiar to him 
among English poets. . . . He prattles inadvertently 
away, and all the while, like the princess in the story, lets 
fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of good 
luck to be natural ! It is the good gift which the fairy grand- 
mother brings to her prime favorite in the cradle. 
He is always natural, because if not always absolutely new, 
he is always delightfully fresh, because he sets before us the 



6 CHAUCER 

world as it honestly appeared to Geoffrey Chaucer, and not 
a world as it seemed proper to certain persons that it ought 
to appear. . . . There is in him the exuberant fresh- 
ness and greenness of spring. . . . Reading him is like 
brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise. Everything is 
new and sparkling and fragrant. . . . His first merit, 
the chief one in all art, is sincerity. . . . He is the most 
unconventional of poets and the frankest. If his story be 
dull, he rids his hearers of all uncomfortable qualms by being 
himself the first to yawn. . . . His nature was sensitive 
to the natural. . . . There was a pervading wholesome- 
ness in the writings of this man — a vernal property that 
soothes and refreshes in a way of which no other has ever 
found the secret. I repeat to myself a thousand times, 

1 Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote 

And smale fowles maken melodye', 

and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontaminated 
springtide seems to lift the hair on my forehead. The most 
hardened roue of literature can scarce confront these simple 
and winning graces without feeling something of the unworn 
sentiment of his youth revive in him. Poets have forgotten 
that the way to be original is to be healthy ; that the fresh 
color so delightful in all good writing is won by escaping 
from the fixed air of self into the brisk atmosphere of univer- 
sal sentiments ; and that to make the common marvellous, as 
if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. It is good to re- 
treat now and then from beyond earshot of the introspective 
confidences of modern literature, and to lose ourselves in the 
gracious worldliness of Chaucer. . . . The quiet un- 
concern with which he says his best things is peculiar to 
him among English poets, though Goldsmith, Addison, and 
Thackeray have approached it in prose." — Lowell. 



CHAUCER 7 

" There is no other English author so absolutely free, not 
merely from effort but from the faintest suggestion of ef- 
fort. . . . No healthier nature than his can be found in 
the whole range of our literature among the poets whose per- 
sonality appears prominent in their writings. There is not a 
trace of morbid feeling in his lines, which still glow for us 
with all the freshness of immortal youth." — T. R. Lounsbury. 

'* His poetry resembles the root just springing from the 
ground rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no 
' babbling gossip of the air,' fluent and redundant ; but, like 
a stammerer or a dumb person that has just found the use of 
speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with 
anxious pauses and fond repetitions, to prevent mistakes. 
. . . There were none of the commonplaces of poetic dic- 
tion in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no bor- 
rowed roseate tints ; he was obliged to inspect things for 
himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, 
as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope 
our way." — William Hazlitt. 

11 No doubt this simplicity — naivete, we are fond of calling 
it — is one of the first delights that every reader experiences 
on his first introduction to Chaucer." — Alfred Ainger. 

" Chaucer's artlessness is half the secret of his wonderful 
ease in story-telling, and is so engaging that, like a child's 
sweet unconsciousness, one would not wish it otherwise." — 
H. A. Beers. 

'* Many of his verses come to us like the prattle of child- 
hood. ' ' — William Minto. 

"A charming freshness forms the atmosphere of all his 
work;. he is perpetually new." — W. M. Rossetti. 



8 CHAUCER 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A clerk ther was of Oxenford also, 
That un-to logik hadde longe y-go. 
As lene was his hors as is a rake, 
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake ; 
But loked holwe, and ther-to soberly. 
Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy ; 
For he had geten him yet no benefyce, 
Ne was so worldly for to have offyce." 

— Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 

11 Amonges thise povre folk ther dvvelte a man 
Which that was holden povrest of hem alle ; 
But hye god som tyme senden can 
His grace in-to a litel oxes stalle ; 
Ianicula men of that throp him calle." 

— The Clerkes Tale. 

" A povre widwe, somdel stope in age, 
Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage, 
Bisyde a grove, stonding in a dale. 
This widwe, of which I telle yow my tale, 
Sin thilke day that she was last a wyf, 
In pacience ladde a ful simple lyf, 
For litel was hir catel and hir rente ; 
By housbondrye, of such as God hir sente, 
She fond hir-self, and eek hir doghtren two." 

— The Nonne Preestes Tale. 

2. Liquid Smoothness. — " He had a very fine ear for 
the music of verse, and the tale and the verse go together like 
the voice and music. Indeed, so softly flowing and bright 
are they that to read them is like listening in a meadow full 
of sunshine to a clear stream rippling over its bed of pebbles." 
— Stopford Brooke. 

" He was . . . one of the best versifiers that ever 
made English trip and sing with a gayety that seemed care- 
less, but where every foot beats time to the time of thought. 
. . . He found our language lumpish, stiff, unwilling, too 



CHAUCER 9 

apt to speak Saxonly in grouty monosyllables ; he left it en- 
riched with the longer measure of the Italian and Provencal 
poets. He reconciled, in the harmony of his verse, the Eng- 
lish bluntness with the dignity and elegance of the less homely 
Southern speech." — Lowell. 

" Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he 
wrote, and that versification is a thing in a great degree me- 
chanical, is not one of his least merits. It has considerable 
strength and harmony, and its apparent deficiency in the 
latter respect arises chiefly from the alterations which have 
since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of accenting 
the words of the language." — William Hazlitt. 

" A little long they [Chaucer's ' Tales'] may be; all the 
writings of this age, French, or imitated from the French, are 
born of too prodigal minds ; but how they glide along ! A 
winding stream which flows smoothly on level sand, and glit- 
ters now and again in the sun, is the only image we can 
find." — Taine. 

" It would be difficult to find a parallel in Italian verse 
of any date to the easy and thoroughly English fluency of 
Chaucer's facile riding rhyme." — Francis Palgrave. 

[He is] " . . . the master who uses our language 
with a power, a freedom, a variety, a rhythmic beauty, that, 
in five centuries, not ten of his successors have been found 
able to rival. . . . There is in his verse a music which 
hardly ever loses itself, and which at times is as sweet as 
that in any English poet after him. . . . Chaucer is the 
father of our splendid English poetry, he is our < well of 
English undefiled,' because, by the lovely charm of his dic- 
tion, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch 
and founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, 
Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the 
fluid movement of Chaucer." — T. H. Ward. 

"No student of the poet's writings needs now to be told 
that the art of versification was an art in which he was su- 



IO CHAUCER 

premely interested, and to which he gave the most careful 
study. The result is that he became one of the greatest 
masters of melody that our literature has on its rolls." — T. R. 
Lounsbury. 

" He has an exquisite ear for music, and pays great atten- 
tion to the melodious flow of his verse." — Walter Skeat. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



tt 



(< 



Hir litel child lay weping in hir arm, 
And kneling, pitously to him she seyde, 

' Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm.' 
With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde, 
And over his litel yen she it leyde ; 

And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, 

And in-to heven hir yen up she caste. 

1 Moder,' quod she, ' and mayde bright, Marye, 

Rewe on my child, that of thy gentillesse 
Rewest on every rewful in distresse ! ' " 

— The Tale of the Man of Lawe. 

" The bisy larke, messager of day, 
Salueth in hir song the morwe gray ; 
And fyry Phebus ryseth up so brighte, 
That al the orient laugheth of the lighte, 
And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
The silver dropes hanging on the leves." 

— The Knightes Tale. 

Thus hath this pitous day a blisful ende, 

For every man and womman dooth his might 

This day in murthe and revel to dispende 
Fil on the welkne shoon the sterres light. 
For more solempne in every mannes sight 

This feste was, and gretter of costage, 

Than was the revel of hir mariage." 

— The Clerkes Tale. 



CHAUCER 1 1 

3. Genial Humor — Kindly Satire. — "All his best 
work as a poet was done at the instigation of love and humor. 
It is remarkable that, while both his serious and his comic 
productions are founded, in most cases, on pre-existing works 
of art, in the serious pieces he follows his original much more 
closely than in the comic. In his tales, as Tyrwhitt says, ' He 
is generally satisfied with borrowing a slight hint of his sub- 
ject, which he varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, 
and gives the whole the air and color of an original.' His 
imagination dwelt by preference in the regions of brightness, 
sweetness, softness, and laughter in its broadest as well as in 
its subtlest varieties. . . . Affairs of the heart in high 
and humble life are his themes ; he is the sympathetic poet 
of the aspirations, sorrows, and manifold ludicrous complica- 
tions of the tender passion. . . . Chaucer's humor is the 
most universally patent and easily recognized of his gifts. The 
smile or laugh that he raises, by refined irony or by broad jest 
and incident, is conspicuously genial. The great criterion of 
good nature, the indispensable basis of humor, is the power of 
making and sustaining a jest at one's own expense ; and none 
of our humorists bears this test so well as Chaucer. He often 
harps on his own supposed imperfections, his ignorance of 
love, his want of rhetorical skill, his poverty." — William 
Minto. 

"A hearty laugh and a thrust in the ribs are his weapons. 
He makes fun of you to your face ; and even if you wince a 
little, you cannot help joining in his mirth. ... In 
Chaucer's poetry the humor is playing all the time round the 
horizon like heat-lightning. It is unexpected and unpredict- 
able ; but as soon as you turn away from watching for it, be- 
hold it flashes again as innocently and softly as ever. 
The satire of the other [Chaucer] is genial with the broad 
sunshine of humor, into which the victims walk forth with a 
delightful unconcern, laying aside of themselves the disguises 
that seem to make them uncomfortably warm, till they have 



12 CHAUCER 

made a thorough betrayal of themselves so unconsciously that 
we almost pity while we laugh. . . . There is no touch 
of cynicism in all he wrote. . . . It is true ... of 
his humor that it pervades his comic tales like sunshine, and 
never dazzles the attention by a sudden flash. Sometimes he 
brings it in parenthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly 
as almost to slip by without our notice. Sometimes he turns 
round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made into fine 
writing. . . . Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly 
through his very tears. . . . Chaucer drew from the South 
a certain airiness of sentiment and expression, a felicity of 
phrase, and an elegance of turn hitherto unprecedented and 
hardly yet matched in our literature, but all the while kept firm 
hold of his native soundness of understanding and that genial 
humor which seems to be the proper element of worldly wis- 
dom. . . . His humor ... in its suavity, its per- 
petual presence, and its shy unobtrusiveness, is something 
wholly new in literature." — Lowell. 

11 He brightens his delineations with kindly and enjoying 
humor — the humor of a man who knows life in its multiform 
aspects from observing it with mingled keenness and sympathy 
and mixing in it personally." — IV. M. Rossetti. 

" There is [in his verse] a sweet humanity, which takes all 
bitterness from his satire, and exhibits some degree of gracious 
sympathy with every sort and condition of men. . . . 
His humor is usually subtile and playful ; even at its broadest 
and coarsest it is genuine, and has at least the artist's apology 
to excuse it." — -J. C. Robertson. 

" He never sneers, for he had a wide charity, and we can 
always smile in his pages at the follies and forgive the sins of 
men." — Stopford Brooke. 

" The most striking thing about Chaucer's humor is its 
great kindliness. He laughs, but not maliciously. He has 
nothing of the partisan, for he looks at the whole world with 
the same mirthful gaze. Nothing is too high for his laughter, 



CHAUCER 13 

nothing is too low. . . . He does not run after a jest ; 
he does not joke merely for the sake of joking. He has his 
humor under such perfect control that he can shift his 
humorous point of view as he changes from one speaker to an- 
other."— 6>. IV. Holmes. 

" Concerning Chaucer's use of the power which he in so 
large a measure possessed, viz., that of covering with ridicule 
the palpable vices or weaknesses of the classes or kinds of men 
represented by some of his character-types, one assertion may 
be made with tolerable safety. Whatever may have been the 
first stimulus and the ultimate scope of the wit and humor 
which he here expended, they are not to be explained as 
moral indignation in disguise. And in truth Chaucer's mer- 
riment flows spontaneously from a source very near the sur- 
face ; he is so extremely diverting because he is so extremely 
diverted himself."— T. H. Ward. 

"His satire ... is genial. For the lowest he has 
no scorn as he has for the hypocrisies of men who wear 
religion as a cloak to their offences." — Henry Morley. 

" The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper, 
betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed satire 
when least expected. His fine irony may have sometimes 
left his commendations, or even the objects of his admiration, 
in a very ambiguous condition." — Be?yamin Disraeli. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A yerd she hadde, enclosed al aboute 
With stikkes, and a drye dich with-oute, 
In which she had a cok, hight Chauntecleer, 
In al the land of crowing nas his peer. 
His vois was merier than the mery orgon 
On messe-dayes that in the chirche gon ; 
Wei sikerer was his crowing in his logge 
Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge. 
By nature knew he ech ascencioun 
Of equinoxial in thilke toun ; 



i I CH UJCER 

Foi whan degrees fiftene were ascendedi 

rhanne now,- he, that it might nat be amended.** 

— . '. V5w .-.V. 

" Of Sampson now wol 1 na-more seyiii 
Beth wai in this ensample old and playn 
That no men telle hir conseil til hii wyveti 

01 swich thing ,\s tho\ wolde h.\n secree t.nn. 
it that it touche hir limmes or hir \\ \ esu M 

— .""..• .i.'.-vs/.f Tiile. 

" He was an es) man to yeve penauncei 
Ther as he wiste to han ■ good pitaunce ; 
For unto b po\ i o oi di o foi to yive 
[s signe that a man is wel y-shrive 
Foi II he Nat", he dorste make avaunt, 
He wiste that a man was repentaunt 

For main .* man so haul is of Ins hoi to. 

\\c may nat wepe, al-thogh him sore smortc. 
Therefore, instede ofweping and preyeres, 
Men moot yeve silvei to the povre tiou-s." 
— Prolog ..- to 1 U ■ 

4. Sympathy with Suffering — Simple Pathos. — 
*• In depth of simple pathos and intensity of conception, 

never swerving from his subject, 1 think no other writer 
tes near him. not even the Greek tragedians." — //';. 

•- rhe deepest pathos of the drama . . . is sudden as 

while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity, 
a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This presence 
the authors own sympathy is noticeable in all Chaucer's 
pathetic pas . . . When he comes to the sorrow 

of his story, he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe 
them and dwell upon them with a kind o( pleased com] 

child treats a wounded bird which he few rasp 

•tly. and yet cannot make tip his mind wholly to let 
' — Z(W .-.'.'. 



CHAUCER 15 

" He is at heart surpassingly gentle and compassionate. 
The innocence and sufferings of women move him deeply." 
— Henry S. Pancoast. 

"Pity for inevitable suffering is a note of Chaucer's 
mind which forever distinguishes him from Boccaccio and 
makes him out as the true forerunner of the poet of Hamlet 
and Othello. . . . He is overcome by ' pity and ruth ' 
as he reads of suffering, and his eyes ' wax foul and sore ' as 
he prepares to tell of its infliction." — T. H. Ward. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Alias, the wo ! alias, the peynes stronge, 
That I for yow have suffred, and so longe ! 
Alias, the deeth ! alias, myn Emelye ! 
Alias, departing of our companye ! 
Alias, myn hertes quene ! alias, my wyf ! 
Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf ! 
What is this world ? what asketh men to have ? 
Now with his love, now in his colde grave 
Allone, with-outen any companye." 

— The Knightes Tale. 

u O, which a pitous thing it was to see 

Hir swowning, and hir humble voys to here ! 
' Grauntmercy, lord, that thanke I yow,' quod she, 
' That ye han saved me my children dere ! 
Now rekke I never to ben deed right here ; 
Sith I stonde in your love and in your grace, 
No fors of deeth, ne whan my spirit pace.' " 

— The Clerkes Tale. 

11 Have ye nat seyn som tyme a pale face 
Among a prees, of him that hath be lad 
Toward his deeth, wher-as him gat no grace 
And swich a colour in his face hath had, 
Men mighte knowe his face, that was bistad, 
Amonges alle the faces in that route : 
So stant Custance, and loketh hir aboute." 

— The Man of Lawes Tale. 



l6 CHAUCER 

5. Respect for Womanhood. — " Chaucer alone, in 
his time, felt the whole beauty of womanhood, and felt it 
most in its most perfect type — in wifehood, with the modest 
graces of the daisy, with its soothing virtues, and its power of 
healing inward wounds. Physicians in his day ascribed such 
power to the daisy, which, by Heaven's special blessing, was 
made common to all, and was the outward emblem also of 
the true and pure wife in its heart of gold and its white crown 
of innocence. ... As the range of Shakespeare was 
from Imogen to Dame Quickly and lower, so the range of 
Chaucer is from the ideal patience of the wife Griselda, or the 
girlish innocence and grace of Emelie in the ' Knight's Tale ' 
to the Wife of Bath and lower ; and in each of these great 
poets the predominating sense is of the beauty and honor of 
true womanhood. If there were many Englishmen who read 
what we have of the ' Canterbury Tales ' straight through, it 
would not be necessary to say that, even in the fragment as 
it stands, expression of the poet's sense of the worth and 
beauty of womanhood, very greatly predominates over his 
satire of the weaknesses of women. . . . In a sense of 
his own, he takes the daisy for his flower, and rises high 
above all poets of his age in honor to marriage and praise of 
the purity of the wife's white daisy crown." — Henry Morley. 

" We have no hesitation in placing him very high in the 
list of those who have exalted our ideal of the womanly char- 
acter. Womanliness is indeed the characteristic feature of 
Chaucer's women. " — Alfred Ainger. 

te His works show that he was not likely to fail in that 
respectfulness that women are said to love. He is on all oc- 
casions the champion of ' gentle woman, gentle creatures ; ' 
and however much sly fun he makes of their foibles, he com- 
pensates amply by frequently expressed indignation at their 
wrongs and by praises of their many virtues. . . . All 
Chaucer's works show that he was most intimately pervaded 
by chivalrous sentiment. . . . It is womanhood in dis- 



CHAUCER 17 

tress that enters his heart with the keenest stroke. 
His gallery of distressed heroines was as wide as the range of 
legend and history that was known to him. . . . The 
thought of their suffering agitates him, destroys his compos- 
ure ; he cannot proceed without stopping to express his com- 
passion or to appeal to Heaven against the caprice of Fortune 
or the wickedness of men." — William Minto. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Lo, what gentillesse these women have, 
If we coude know it for our rudenesse ! 

How busie they be us to keepe and save, 
Both in hele, and also in sikenesse ! 
And always right sorrie for our distresse, 

In every manner ; thus shew thy routhe, 

That in hem is al goodnesse and trouthe." 

— A Praise of Women. 

" O blissful ordre, of wedlok precious, 
Thou art so mery, and eek so vertuous, 
And so commended and appreved eek, 
That every man that halt him worth a leek, 
Up-on his bare knees oghte al his lyf 
Thanken his god that him hath sent a wyf ; 
Or elles preye to god him for to sende 
A wyf, to laste un-to his lyves ende." 

— The Marchante Tale. 



a 



In hir is heigh beautee with-oute pryde, 
Yowthe, with-oute grenehede or folye ; 
To alle hir werkes vertu is hir gyde, 
Humblesse hath slayn in hir al tirannye. 
She is mirour of alle curteisye ; 
Hir herte is verray chambre of holinesse, 
Hir hand, ministre of fredom for almesse." 

— The Tale of the Man of Lawe. 

6. Love of Nature. — " His descriptions of nature are 
as true as his sketches of human character ; and incidental 
2 



18 CHAUCER 

touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakably as 
his unflagging interest in the study of the other. 
When he went forth on these April and May mornings, it 
was not solely with the intent of composing a roundelay or a 
marguerite ; but we may be well assured that he allowed the 
songs of the little birds, the perfume of the flowers, and the 
fresh .verdure of the English landscape to sink into his very 
soul."— T. H. Ward. 

" He was the first who made the love of nature a dis- 
tinct element in our poetry. . . . The delightful and 
simple familiarity of the poet with the meadows, brooks, 
and birds, and his love of them, has the effect of making 
every common aspect of nature new ; the May morning is 
transfigured by his enjoyment of it ; the grass of the field is 
seen as those in Paradise beheld it ; the dew lies on our 
heart as we go forth with the poet in the dawning, and the 
wind blows past our ear like the music of an old song heard 
in the days of childhood." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

" Chaucer's heart fitted him very well to be the poet of 
tender sentiment. He seems to have dwelt with fond obser- 
vation on everything that was bright and pretty, from ' the 
smale fowles that slepen all the night with open eye,' to the 
little herd-grooms playing on their pipes of green corn. He 
watched the little conies at their play, the little squirrels at 
their sylvan feasts. . . . But of all things of beauty in 
nature, the singing-birds were his most especial favorites. 
He often dwells on the ravishing sweetness of their melodies. " 
— William Minto. 

" The Troubadour hailed the return of spring ; but with 
him it was a piece of empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true 
delight in the new green of the leaves and the return of the 
singing-birds. . . . He has never so much as heard of 
the ' burthen and mystery of all this unintelligible world.' 
His flowers and trees and birds have never bothered them- 
selves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than 



CHAUCER 19 

any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, 
that he ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy 
and thankfulness. He is the first great poet who really loved 
outward nature as the source of conscious pleasurable emo- 
tion. . . . Chaucer took a true delight in the new 
green of the leaves and the return of singing-birds — a delight 
as simple as that of Robin Hood." — Lowell. 

" On the first of May Chaucer rises and goes out into the 
meadows. Love enters his heart with the balmy air ; the 
landscape is transfigured and the birds begin to sing." — 
Tame. 

" He is, more than all [other] English poets, the poet of 
the lusty spring, of ' Aprille ' with her ' show res sweet' and 
the ' foules ' song ; of ' May with all her floures ' and her 
green ; of the new leaves in the wood and the meadows new 
— powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his 
' Legend of Good Women.' A fresh, vernal air blows 
through all his pages." — H. A. Beers. 

" Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and dis- 
crimination of character ; and his interest in what he saw 
gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. 
Nature is the soul of art : there is a strength as well 
as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on 
nature that nothing else can supply. 

" Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery . . . have 
a local truth and freshness which gives the very feeling of 
the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground." — William 
Hazlitt. 

" No poet ever loved nature more than Chaucer did ; but 
it was with a simple, unreflective, child-like love. 
It was nature in her ' first intention,' her most obvious as- 
pects, that attracted him. . . . It is not on nature as a 
great whole, much less ^s an abstraction, that his thought 
usually dwells. It is the outer world in its most concrete 
forms and objects with which he delights to interweave his 



20 CHAUCER 

poetry — the homely scenes of South England, the oaks and 
other forest trees, the green meadows, quiet fields, and com- 
fortable farms, as well as the great castles where the nobles 
dwelt. ... I know not that the habitual forms of Eng- 
lish landscape, those that are most rural and most unchanged, 
have ever since found a truer poet, one who brings before the 
mind the scene and the spirit of it, uncolored by any inter- 
vention of his own thought or sentiment. And his favorite 
season — it is the May-time. Of this he is never tired of sing- 
ing-" — J- C- Shairp. 

" Lover of men and lover of books, Chaucer is no less the 
lover of nature, for her alone delighting to leave his studies. 
We must think of him as he shows himself in one 
of his poems, going out alone in. the meadows in the still- 
ness of early morning and falling on his knees to greet the 
daisy." — Henry S. Pancoast. 

" How joyously he watches the daisy — 

4 Knelyng alway til it unclosed was 
Uppon the smale, softe, swete, gras' — 

and the ' vyolet al newe and fresche perwynke (French per- 
venche, periwinkle), and the lilye on her stalke grene, and the 
may-blossoms partie whyte and rede.' How he notes the 
glimpsing of eyes through the leaves, the squirrels sitting up 
on the branches ' making feasts,' the hives of bees, the fun of 
stamping for eels, the rooks' nests on the great trees, and the 
thousand things showing so strong a love of country sights 
and sounds, animals, and birds, and such knowledge of them, 
that we half suspect that he was not brought up as a boy in 
London town." — H. R. Haweis. 



CHAUCER 21 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



11 On every bough the briddes herde I singe, 
With voys of aungel in hir armonye, 
Som besyed hem hir briddes forth to bringe, 
The litel conyes to hir pley gunne hye, 
And further al aboute I gan espye 
The dredful roo, the buk, the hert, and hinde, 
Squerels and beestes smale of gentil kinde." 

— The Parlement of Foules. 

11 For May wol have no slogardye anight, 
The sesoun priketh every gentil herte, 
And maketh him out of his sleep to sterte, 
And seieth, ' Arys and do thyn observaunce.' " 

— The Knight es Tale. 

'* And anone as I the day aspide, 
No longer would I in my bed abide, 
But to a wood that was fast by 
I went forth alone boldely, 
And held the way down by a brookes side, 
Till I came to a laund of white and greene, 
So faire a one had I never in been, 
The ground was greene, ypoudred with daisie, 
The floures and the greves like hie, 
Al greene and white, was nothing elles seene. 

And the river that I sat upon, 
It made such a noise as it ron, 
Accordaunt with the birdes armony, 
Me thought it was the beste melody 
That mighte ben yheard of any mon." 

— The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. 

7. Sincerity — Elevation of Character. — "He knew 
and lived in the society of persons of rank, yet long before 
Tennyson he placed the kind heart above the coronet and 



22 CHAUCER 

faithfulness over the claims of high descent. Nobility of 
soul had ever his warmest admiration, without regard to the 
rank of life in which it was revealed. . . . Chaucer has 
no animosities and cherishes no grudge." — -J. C. Robertson, 

" Here was a healthy, hearty man, so genuine that he need 
not ask whether he were genuine or no, so sincere as quite to 
forget his own sincerity, so truly pious that he could be happy 
in the best world God chose to make, so humane that he loved 
even the foibles of his kind. Here was a truly epic poet, 
without knowing it, who did not waste time in considering 
whether his age were good or bad, but, quietly taking it for 
granted as the best that ever was or could be for him, has left 
us such a picture of contemporary life as no man ever painted. 
He could look to God without abjectness and on 
man without contempt." — Lowell. 

" The general tenor of his works is decidedly kindly, hon- 
orable, and sincere, permeated with high Christian feeling. 
What he says of human happiness and honor and 
duty could only have been said by a man with a conscience, 
nursed though he had been through the thorny ways of a 
court. . . . No one ever uttered loftier words on the 
meaning of true 'gentrie,' in the sense of gentle birth, or 
words that better commend themselves to an honest republi- 
can age, though they were reiterated by a courtier. He puts 
a very earnest protest into the Wife of Bath's mouth against 
those who, ' boren of a gentil house . . . n'yl himselve 
no gentil dedes; ' 'only a villain's sinful dedes makith a 
cherl,' he says, and follows it up with the prettiest definition 
of noble descent, quite epigrammatic in its grace and truth: 

1 For gentilesse n' is but the renomee 
Of thine anncestres.' " 

— H. R. Haweis. 

" In many passages he insists on the value of the purity of 
womanhood and the nobility of manhood, taking the latter 
to be dependent upon good feeling and courtesy. As he 



CHAUCER 23 

says in the ' Wife of Bath's Tale,' the ' man who is always the 
most virtuous, and most endeavors to be constant in the per- 
formance of gentle deeds, is to be taken to be the greatest 
gentleman. Christ desires that we should derive our gentle- 
ness from Him, and not from our ancestors, however rich.' " 
— Walter Skeai. 

" He is content to find grace and beauty in truth. He 
exhibits, for the most part, the naked object, with little drap- 
ery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not 
for ornament but use, and as like as possible to the things 
themselves. He does not affect to show his power over the 
reader's mind but the power which his subject has over his 
own. . . . There is no artificial pompous display, but a 
strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplic- 
ity of the age in which he lived. . . . The poetry of 
Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the 
manners and superstition of the age. It has all the spirit of 
martyrdom. ' ' — William Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The firste stok fader of gentilesse, 

What man that claymeth gentil for to be, 
Must folowe his trace and alle his wittes dresse 
Vertu to sewe and vyces for to flee. 
For unto vertu longeth dignitee, 
And noght the revers saufly dar I deme, 
Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe. 

" The firste stok was ful of rightwisnesse, 

Trewe of his word, sobre, pitous, and free, 
Clene of his goste and loved besinesse, 
Ageinst the vyce of slouthe in honestee ; 
And but his heir love vertu, as dide he, 
He is noght gentil, thogh he riche seme, 
Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe." 

— A Ballad on Gentilesse. 



24 CHAUCER 

" Fly from the prease and dwell with soothfastnesse. 
Suffise unto thy good though it be small ; 
For horde hath hate and climbing tikelnesse. 
Prease hath envy, and wele is blent over all ; 
Savour no more than thee behove shall ; 
Rede well thy selfe that other folke canst rede, 
And trouth shall thee deliver, it is no drede." 

— Good CounsaiU 

u For o thing, sires, saufly dar I seye, 
That frendes everich other moot obeye, 
If they wol longe holden compnye, 
Love wol nat ben constreyned by maistrye ; 
When maistrie comth, the god of love anon 
Beteth hise winges, and farewel ! he is gon ! 
Love is a thing as any spirit free ; 
Wommen of kinde desiren libertee, 
And nat to be constreyned as a thral ; 
And so don men, if I soth seyen shal." 

— The Frankeleyns Tale. 

8. Narrative Power. — " Chaucer is a great narrative 
poet. In this respect he has no equal in our tongue. . . 
Chaucer's success as a narrative poet is largely due to the ease 
and fulness with which he makes us enter into his own thoughts 
and feelings. . . . There is nothing more conspicuous 
in the ' Canterbury Tales ' than the individuality of their 
composer. The one distinguishing trait that makes him the 
great story-teller of the English language is that he seizes upon 
the central points of interest, and lets everything else go by 
that does not contribute to the effectiveness of their represen- 
tation." — T. R. Lounsbury. 

" There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, 
and that is a collection of fine narratives, especially when the 
narratives are all of different colorings. . . . Chaucer is 
like a jeweller with his hands full : pearls and glass beads, 
sparkling diamonds and common agates, black jet and ruby 
roses, all that history and imagination had been able to gather 



CHAUCER 25 

and fashion during three centuries in the East, in France, in 
Wales, in Provence, in Italy. All that had rolled his way, 
clashed together, broken, or polished by the stream of centuries, 
and by the great jumble of human memory, he holds in his 
hands, arranges it, composes therefrom a long sparkling orna- 
ment, with twenty pendants, a thousand facets, which by 
its splendor, varieties, contrasts may attract and satisfy the 
eyes of those most greedy for amusement and novelty." 
— Taine. 

" Chaucer is a great narrative poet, and in this species of 
poetry, though the author's personality should never be ob- 
truded, it yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and commu- 
nicates an individual quality — a kind of flavor of its own. 
. The pleasure Chaucer takes in telling his stories has 
in itself the effect of consummate skill, and makes us follow all 
the windings of his fancy with sympathetic interest. His best 
tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes hasten- 
ing a little and turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple 
without retarding the current ; sometimes loitering smoothly, 
while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a 
pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a 
water-lily, to float on the surface without breaking it into 
ripples. ' ' — Lowell. 

" He is the prince of story-tellers ; and however much he 
may move others, he is not moved himself. . . . The 
* Canterbury Tales ' — a story-book than which the world does 
not possess a better." — Alexander Smith. 

" He conducts us through his narratives with facile elo- 
quence, smoothing over what is unpalatable, waving aside 
digressions, interspersing easy reflections, never staying too 
long upon one topic. . . . No poet could be more ani- 
mated than Chaucer. All his works are full of bright color, 
fresh feeling, rapid ease, and gaiety of movement. There is 
no tedious dulness in his descriptions, no lingering in the 
march of his narrative. With all his loquacity and vivacity, 



26 CHAUCER 

he knows when his readers have had enough of one thing, 
and passes easily on to something else. The ease of his 
transitions is very remarkable ; . . . he always keeps his 
main subject firmly and clearly in view ; and his well-marked 
digressions add to the general animation by dispersing the 
feeling of rigid restraint without tending in the least to pro- 
duce confusion." — William Minto. 

" He is our greatest story-teller in verse. All the best 
tales are told easily, sincerely, with great grace, and yet with 
so much homeliness that a child would understand them." 
— Stopford Brooke. 

" A great poet by virtue of his natural gifts, he was the 
greatest of narrative poets by virtue of his knowledge of man- 
kind."— R. H. Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" This duk, of whom I make mencioun, 
When he was come almost unto the toun, 
In al his wele and in his moste pryde, 
He was war, as he caste his eye asyde, 
Wher that ther kneled in the hye weye 
A companye of ladies, tweye and tweye, 
Ech after other, clad in clothes blake ; 
But swich a cry and svvich a wo they make 
That in this world nis creature livinge 
That herde swich another weymentinge, 
And of this cry they wolde never stenten 
Til they the reynes of his bredel henten." 

— The Knightes Tale. 

" A theef he was, for sothe, of corn and mele, 
And that a sly and usaunt for to stele. 
His name was hoten deynous Simkin. 
A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kin ; 
The person of the toun hir fader was. 
With hir he yaf ful many a panne of bras, 
For that Simkin sholde in his blood allye. 
She was y-fostred in a nonnerye ; 



CHAUCER 27 

For Simkin wolde no wyf, as he sayde, 
But she were wel e-norissed and a mayde, 
To saven his estaat and yomanrye, 
And she was proud and pert as is a pye." 

— The Reeves Tale. 

" At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye, 

Ther dwelte a king that werreyed Russye, 
Thurgh which ther deyde many a doughty man. 
This noble king was cleped Cambinskan, 
Which in his tyme was of so greet renoun 
That ther nas no-wher in no regioun 
So excellent a lord in alle thing ; 
Him lakked noght that longeth to a king. 
As of the secte of which that he was born 
He kept his lay, to which that he was sworn ; 
And the-rto he was hardy, wys, and riche, 
And pietous and just alwey y-liche ; 
Sooth of his word, benigne, and honurable, 
Of his corage as any centre stable." 

— The Squieres Tale. 

9. Realism— Minuteness — Single Strokes — Viv- 
idness. — " Other fourteenth century writers can tell a story 
but none else of that day can bring the actual world 
of men and women before us with the movement of a Floren- 
tine procession picture, and with a color and a truth of detail 
that anticipate the great Dutch masters of painting." — 
T. H. Ward. 

" When Chaucer describes anything, it is commonly by one 
of those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so easy 
to miss. Is it a woman ? He tells us that she is fresh ; that 
she has glad eyes ; that every day her beauty newed. 
Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where 
the Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away 
the cat. We know without need of more words that he has 
chosen the snuggest corner. . . . Nothing escapes his 
sure eye for the picturesque — the cut of the beard, the soil of 



28 CHAUCER 

armor on the buff jerkin, the rust on the sword, the expression 
of the eye. . . . Chaucer is the first to break away from 
the dreary traditional style and give us not merely stories, but 
the lively pictures of real life as the ever renewed substance 
of poetry. . . . His parson is still unmatched, though 
Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried their hands on him." 
— Lowell. 

" Chaucer excels as the poet of manners or of real life. 
. . . Chaucer most frequently describes things as they are. 

. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity. 
As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, so Chaucer 
was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man 
of business and the world. His poetry reads like history. 
Everything has a downright reality, at least in the relator's 
mind. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon 
evidence. . . . He speaks of what he wishes to describe 
with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what 
has happened to himself, or has had the best information from 
those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his 
pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that 
which would be interesting to the person really concerned : 
yet, as he never omits any material circumstance; he is prolix 
from the number of points on which he touches, without being 
diffuse on any one. . . . The chain of his story is com- 
posed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, 
and riveted by a single blow." — IVilliam Hazlitt. 

" In these [the characters of the ' Canterbury Tales'] his 
knowledge of the world availed him in a peculiar degree, and 
enabled him to give such an accurate picture of ancient man- 
ners as no contemporary nation has transmitted to posterity. 
It is here that we view the pursuits and employments, the cus- 
toms and diversions of our ancestors, copied from the life, and 
represented with equal truth and spirit, by a judge of mankind 
whose penetration qualified him to discern their foibles or dis- 
criminating peculiarities and by an artist who understood 



CHAUCER 29 

that proper selection of circumstances and those predominant 
characteristics which form a finished portrait." — Thomas 
Warton. 

" The ' Canterbury Tales ' are as real as anything in Shake- 
speare or Burns. . . . The prologue, ... in which 
we make the acquaintance of the pilgrims, is the ripest, most 
genial and humorous — altogether the most masterly thing 
which Chaucer has left us. In its own way, and within its 
own limits, it is the most wonderful thing in the language. 
The people we read about are as real as the people we brush 
clothes with in the street — nay, much more real ; for we not 
only see their faces and the fashion and texture of their gar- 
ments, we know also what they think, how they express them- 
selves, and with what eyes they look out on the world. Chau- 
cer's art in this prologue is simple perfection. He indulges 
in no irrelevant description ; he airs no fine sentiments ; he 
takes no special pains as to style or poetic ornament ; but every 
careless touch tells, every sly line reveals character ; the de- 
scription of each man's horse-furniture and array reads like 
memoir. " — Alexander Smith. 

" To read Chaucer closely is really to live for the moment 
in the fourteenth century, to hear the talk and see the faces 
of the whole people. Shakespeare never did so much for his 
time. He gave us philosophy, thoughts, fancy, dramatic 
action, but we do not get from him a whole century alive 
again, a whole nation speaking for itself, class by class, the 
real English home-life ; men and their thoughts at once ; 
the colors, the manners, the accents, the dress, the characters, 
the sentiments, the science, — town, field, park and river 
scenery, farm-house, inn, castle, and wharf, all brought back 
to us, down to the very scent of them, down to the cat driven 
from the best seat, the pet dog, birds, and the coals on the 
fire. We get that from Chaucer. . . . His characters are 
splendidly varied and true to nature." — H. R. Haweis. 



30 CHAUCER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Blak was his berd, and manly was his face. 
The cercles of his eyen in his heed 
They gloweden bitwixe yelow and reed, 
And lyk a griffon loked he aboute, 
With kempe heres on his browes stoute ; 
His limes grete, his braunes harde and stronge, 
His shuldres brode, his armes rounde and longe. 
And as the gyse was in his contree 
Ful hye up-on a char of gold stood he, 
With foure whyte boles in the trays. 
In-stede of cote-armure over his harnays, 
With nayles yelwe and brighte as any gold, 
He hadde a beres skin, col-black, for-old. 
His longe heer was kembd bihinde his bak, 
As any ravenes fether it shoon for-blak." 

— The Knightes Tale. 

" This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale, 
Sin thilke day that she was last a wyf, 
In pacience ladde a ful simple lyf, 
For litel was hir catel and hir rente ; 
For housbondrye of such as God hir sente, 
She fond hir-self and eek hir doghtren two. 
Three large sowes hadde she and namo, 
Three kyn and eek a sheep that highte Malle. 
Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle, 
In which she eet ful many a sclendre meel." 

— The Nonne Frees tes Tale. 



a 



A garden saw I full of blossmy bowes, 
Upon a river, in a grene mede, 
Ther as that swetnesse evermore ynow is, 
With floures whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede, 
And colde welle-stremes, no-thing dede, 
That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte, 
With finnes rede and scales silver-brighte." 

— The Pa?'le7>ient of Foules. 



CHAUCER 31 

10. Portrayal of Character. — ''He is the first great 
painter of character, because he is the first great observer of 
it among European writers. . . . His works contain 
passages displaying a penetrating insight into the minds of 
men, as well as a keen eye for their manners, together with 
a power of generalizing, which, when kept within due bounds, 
lies at the root of the wise knowledge of human kind so ad- 
mirable to us in our great essayists from Bacon to Addison 
and his modern successors." — T. H. Ward. 

11 Quaint as they [his characters] are, they are the very quin- 
tessence of human nature. They live yet, fresh and vivid, pas- 
sionate and strong, as they did on their way to the tomb of St. 
Thomas upward of five hundred years ago." — William Howitt. 

" No author who ever existed (Shakespeare alone except- 
ed) seizes more powerfully the manners, the humors, and the 
sentiments of mankind, or delineates them more vigorously. 
Every point which has relation to the action of 
the human mind or the modifications of man as he appears 
in a state of society, is treated by him with a vividness 
and energy which at once command our sympathy and 
extort our astonishment. . . . His personages always 
feel, and we confess the truth of their feelings ; what passes 
in their minds, or falls from their tongues, has the clear 
and decisive character which proclaims it human, together 
with the vividness, subtleness, and delicacy which few au- 
thors in the most enlightened ages have been equally fortu- 
nate in seizing." — William Godwin. 

" Above all, Chaucer has an eye for character that seems 
to have caught at once not only mental and physical 
features, but even its expression in variety of costume — an 
eye, indeed, second only, if it should be called second in 
some respects, to that of Shakespeare. I know of nothing 
that may be compared to the prologue to the ' Canterbury 
Tales,' and to the story of the ' Canon's Yeoman,' before 
Chaucer. But it is in his characters, especially, that his 



32 CHAUCER 

manner is large and free ; for he is painting history, though 
with the fidelity of a portrait. He brings out strongly the es- 
sential traits, characteristic of the genus rather than of the in- 
dividual. . . . William Blake says, ' The characters of 
Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all 
ages and all nations.' Some of the names and titles are 
altered by time, but the characters remain forever unal- 
tered, and consequently they are the physiognomies and lin- 
eaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never 
steps. ... In his outside accessories, it is true, he is 
sometimes as minute as if he were illuminating a missal. 
In this he has an artistic purpose. It is here that 
he individualizes, and while every touch harmonizes with and 
seems to complete the moral features of the character, he makes 
us feel that we are among living men and not the abstracted 
images of men . . . Chaucer, never forgetting the es- 
sential sameness of human nature, makes it possible, and even 
probable, that his motley characters should meet on a com- 
mon footing, while he gives to each the expression that be- 
longs to him, the result of special circumstances or training. 
Indeed, the absence of any suggestion of caste cannot fail to 
strike any reader familiar with the literature on which he is 
supposed to have formed himself. No characters are at once 
so broadly human and so definitely outlined as his. Belong- 
ing, some of them, to extinct types, they continue contem- 
porary and familiar forever." — Lowell. 

1 ' The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what 
the persons he describes must have felt than perhaps those of 
any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions 
of the poet's fancy, but are founded on the natural impulses 
and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. 
There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, 
which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or 
say. . . . The picturesque and the dramatic are in him 
closely blended together and hardly distinguishable ; for he 



CHAUCER 33 

principally describes external appearances as indicating char- 
acter, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning 
in what he sees, and it is this that catches his eye by 
sympathy. . . . [His characters] are every one sam- 
ples of a kind, abstract definitions of a species. 
Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men as 
Linnaeus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to 
this day ; others that are obsolete, and may well be dis- 
pensed with, still live in his description of them." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"To a certain extent Lowell is right in saying that there 
is no caste feeling among Chaucer's Pilgrims. . . . But 
we should greatly misunderstand the delicacy of Chaucer's 
sense of manners as well as of character if we went away 
with the impression that in the ' Canterbury Tales ' there 
is no trace of the distinctions of rank, and that in the pil- 
grimage there is no respect paid to persons. ... A line 
is drawn, though unobtrusively, and with delicate sugges- 
tive art, between the ' gentles ' and the other pilgrims. If 
this had not been done, we should have been compelled to 
say that our poet inaccurately portrayed the life of the times. 
But he has done it, and done it not by harsh, angular, forced 
assertion, but easily and naturally in his clear-sighted shaping 
and working out of his materials. . . . If we fail to per- 
ceive this contrast between the serious and the ludicrous side 
of the Canterbury pilgrimage, if we miss the poet's reconcil- 
iation of the two without repression of either, Chaucer's gen- 
ius, in so far as regards manners and character, has labored 
for us in vain." — William Minto. 

"He does more [than narrate]. He observes characters, 
notes their differences, studies the coherence of their parts, en- 
deavors to bring forward living and distinct persons — a thing 
unheard of in his time, but which the renovators in the six- 
teenth century, and first among them Shakespeare, will do 
afterwards. . . . For the first time, in Chaucer, character 
3 



34 CHAUCER 

stands out in relief; its parts are held together; it is no longer 
an unsubstantial phantom. You may comprehend its past 
and see its present action. Its externals manifest the personal 
and incommunicable details of its inner nature and the infinite 
complexity of its economy and motion. To this day, after 
four centuries, that character is individualized and typical ; it 
remains distinct in our memory, like the creations of Shake- 
speare and Rubens. . . . Chaucer begins with the por- 
trait of all his narrators, . . . about thirty distinct figures, 
of every sex, condition, age, each painted with his disposition, 
age, costume, turns of speech, little significant actions, habits, 
antecedents, each maintained in his character by his talk and 
subsequent actions so well, that we can discern here, before 
any other notion, the germ of the domestic novel as we write 
it to-day." — Taine. 

"Chaucer alone comes near to Shakespeare in that supreme 
quality of the dramatist which enables him to show the char- 
acters of men as they are betrayed by themselves, wholly 
developed as if from within, not as described from without 
by an imperfect and prejudiced observer. . . . The pro- 
cession of Chaucer's Pilgrims is the very march of man on the 
high-road of life. . . . It [the 'Canterbury Tales'] is the 
work of a man who knew the manner of that true pilgrimage 
of life, against which the stout-hearted WyclirT had never 
preached . ' ' — Henry Morley. 

"It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought 
face to face, not with characters or allegories or reminiscences 
of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct 
in temper and sentiment as in face or costume or mode of 
speech; and with this distinctness of each maintained through- 
out the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It 
is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power 
which not only creates each character but continues it with its 
fellows, which not only adjusts each tale or jest to the temper 
of the person who utters it, but fuses all into a poetic unity. 



CHAUCER 35 

It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity which sur- 
rounds us in the 'Canterbury Tales.' . . . And it is life 
that he loves — the delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its 
farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis 
or its Smollett — like adventures of the millers and the clerks. 
It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, which enables 
him to reflect man for us as none but Shakespeare has ever re- 
flected him and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense and 
kindly humor, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even 
Shakespeare has not surpassed." — -J. R. Green. 

" Chaucer's perception of character and his skill in deline- 
ating it were marvellous. . . . Chaucer's characters are 
more than portraits of classes: they are people, real, live, 
individual." — R. H. Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Wei loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes, 
And for to drinken strong wyn, reed as blood. 
Than wolde he speke and crye as he were wood. 
And whan that he wel dronken hadde the wyn,' 
Than wolde he speke no word but Latyn. 
A fewe termes hadde he, two or thre, 
That he had lerned out of som decree ; 
No wonder is, he herde it al the day ; 
And eek ye knowen well how that a jay 
Can clepen ' Watte ' as well as can the pope. 
But who-so coude in other thing him grope, 
Thanne hadde he spent al his philosophye ; 
Ay, ' Questio quid iurisj wolde he crye. 
He was a gentil harlot and a kinde ; 
A bettre felawe sholde men noght finde." 

— Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 

"Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, 
That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy; 
Hir gretteste ooth was but by seynt Loy ; 
And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. 
Ful wel sche song the service divyne, 



36 CHAUCER 

Entuned in hir nose ful semely ; 
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, 
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. 
At mete wel y-taught was she with-alle ; 
She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle, 
Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe." 

— Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 

" Embrouded was he, as it were a mede 
Al ful of fresshe floures whyte and rede. 
Singinge he was or floytynge al the day ; 
He was as fresh as is the month of May. 
Short was his goune, with sieves long and wyde. 
Wel coude he sitte on hors and faire ryde. 
He coude songes make and wel endyte, 
Juste and eek daunce, and wel purtreye and wryte. 
So hote he lovede that by nightertale 
He sleep namore than doth a nightergale. 
Curteys he was, lowly, and servisable, 
And carf biforn his fader at the table." 

— Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 

II. Coarseness. — ''It is very misleading to apologize, as 
some writers on Chaucer do, for the gross obscenity of certain 
of the tales, on the ground that this was the outspoken fashion 
of the times — that decorum then permitted greater freedom of 
language. The savor of particular words may have changed 
since the time of Chaucer; but then, as now, people with any 
pretensions to refinement were bound to abstain strictly in the 
presence of ladies from all ribaldry of speech and manner, on 
pain of being classed with 'churls' and 'vileins.' 
And in the 'Canterbury Tales' Chaucer carefully guards him- 
self against being supposed to be ignorant of this law. The 
ribald tales are introduced as being the humours of the lower 
orders, persons ignorant or defiant of the rules of refined soci- 
ety, and, moreover, as we have seen, excited, intoxicated, out 
for a pilgrimage as riotous as our pilgrimage to the Derby. 



CHAUCER 37 

Such riotous mirth was very far indeed from being the fashion 
of the time among fashionable people. Mark how careful 
Chaucer is to shield himself from the responsibility of it. In 
the Prologue (line 725) he prays his readers of their courtesy 
not to set down his plainness of speech as his ' vileinye.' He 
is bound to record faithfully every thing that was said, though 
it had been said by his own brother." — William Minto. 

"In spite of some external stains, which those who have 
studied the influence of manners will easily account for with- 
out imputing them to any moral depravity, we feel that we 
can join the pure-minded Spenser in calling him 'most sacred, 
happy spirit.' " — Lowell. 

" In all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there 
was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of the 
poet. He addressed his own age as contemporaries were 
doing in France and Italy. . . . Our poet has himself 
pleaded that, having fixed on his personage, he had no choice 
to tell any other tale than what that individual would himself 
have told." — Isaac D 1 Israeli. 

Illustration of this characteristic is evidently uncalled for 
here. Those who wish, may find representative specimens in 
"The Somnours Tale," lines 30 to 50 or 95 to 100. 



SPENSER, i552(?)-i599 

Biographical Outline. — Edmund Spenser, born in 
London about 1552; his father was "gentleman by birth," 
though a journeyman weaver, of Lancashire family; Spenser 
enters the newly founded Merchant Taylors' School, probably 
in 1 56 1, being one of " certyn poor schollers of the scholls 
aboute London ; " he enters Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as 
a sizer in May, 1569 ; during the same year was published a 
translation of certain sonnets of du Bellay, ascribed to John 
Van Der Noodt, but doubtless made by Spenser ; all the son- 
nets were published in 1591 as Spenser's own translation ; at 
Cambridge he wins distinction in Greek, Latin, French, and 
Italian, and becomes a close student of Petrarch and Chaucer; 
as an undergraduate he suffers from poverty and ill-health ; 
he forms close friendships with Gabriel Harvey (Hobbinoll) 
and Edward Kirke; in 1576 he receives from Cambridge the 
degree of M.A., and leaves the University; he spends some 
time with kinsfolk near Hurstvvood, and there falls in love 
with " a gentlewoman of no mean house," but she disdains 
him, and his disappointment is recorded in "The Shepheard's 
Calendar " (written about this time and published in 1591) 
and also in " Colin Clout's Come Home Again," written in 
1 59 1 and published in 1595 ; he leaves Hurstwood for Lon- 
don at the advice of Harvey, who was in favor with the Earl 
of Leicester, and as early as 1598 Spenser becomes a member 
of the household of Leicester House (afterward Essex House) 
in the Strand ; he writes poems for the amusement of Leices- 
ter, and apparently acts as his agent in delivering despatches 
to Leicester's correspondents in foreign countries ; Spenser 
probably visite"d Ireland in 1577, and is known to have been 

38 



SPENSER 39 

in France and Spain in 1579 ; through Leicester, he meets 
Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester's nephew, and they become inti- 
mate friends, to their mutual advantage ; with Sidney and 
other friends, Spenser forms a literary club called the Areop- 
agus, where they debate the application of the classical rules 
of quantity to English metres, though Spenser confesses, " I 
am more in love with my versifying." 

During 1579 and 1580 Spenser wrote several poems, which 
have either been lost or have been incorporated into poems 
under titles different from those given them by Harvey and 
Spenser ; among these were nine English comedies, a poem 
entitled " Dreams," which Harvey thought equal to Pe- 
trarch's "Visions" (this was actually prepared for printing, 
with a glossary and illustrations) ; " The Dying Pelican " (also 
prepared for the press), and a prose tract entitled " The Eng- 
lish Poet ; " some of these last poems are possibly embodied 
in part in the " Faery Queen ; " while Spenser is a member 
of Leicester's household he also writes his " Hymns in Honor 
of Love and Beauty " (published in 1596), and begins the 
" Faerie Queene ; " " The Shepheard's Calendar " was pub- 
lished December 5, 1579, with a dedication to Sidney, and 
bearing the pseudonym " Immerito ; " Spenser's friend, Kirke, 
supplied notes and a glossary ; the archaic dialect in the 
" Calendar " is in imitation of the Doric dialect of Theocri- 
tus, whose pastoral poetry suggested the theme to Spenser ; 
Colin in the "Calendar" is Spenser, and Alguind is the 
Archbishop of Canterbury ; the " Calendar ' ' was received with 
enthusiasm, and passed through five editions in eighteen years; 
it was translated into Latin by John Dove in 1585, and it 
gave -to Spenser at once the first place among living English 
poets; in 1580 he published two volumes, consisting of ex- 
tracts from his correspondence with Harvey and dealing prin- 
cipally with questions of English scansion. 

In July, 1580, through the influence of Leicester and Sid- 
ney, Spenser is appointed secretary to Lord Grey, then just 



40 SPENSER 

appointed Lord-deputy to Ireland ; he reaches Dublin with 
Grey, August 12, 1580, and remains in Ireland till the close 
of 1598, excepting two visits to England in 1589-90 and 
1596 ; he accompanies Lord Grey on his expedition to Kerry 
in November, 1580 ; as secretary to Lord Grey he transcribes 
many official documents, some of which are still extant ; in 
1582 he receives ^162 as " rewards " for his secretaryship; 
in March, 1591, he is appointed clerk to the Irish Court of 
Chancery, an office which he holds for several years ; besides 
his salary he receives much landed property, and he holds a 
high social position among the English society of Dublin, 
although Spenser always regarded the Irish as a savage nation ; 
he continues "The Faery Queene," and writes, about 1586, 
his elegy on " Astrophel " (Sidney), which was first pub- 
lished with "Colin Clout' 5 in 1595; in June, 1598, he 
resigns his clerkship in the Dublin Court of Chancery, and 
buys the post of Clerk of the Council of Munster ; when, in 
1586, the property of the earls of Desmond in Munster was 
declared forfeit and was "planted" with English colonists, 
Spenser received 3,028 acres ; in 1588 he settles in Kilcol- 
man Castle, on his Irish estate, Doneraile, County Cork, 
where a sister acts as his housekeeper ; he has serious trouble 
with his neighbors, especially one, Viscount Roche, but 
derives comfort from his intercourse with another neighbor, 
Sir Walter Ralegh, whom Spenser had doubtless before met 
in London and who, like Spenser, had received a portion of 
the confiscated Desmond estate ; Ralegh visits Spenser at Kil- 
colman, and is shown the first three books of the " The Faery 
Queene," which he praises highly. 

In October, 1589, Spenser goes with Ralegh to London, 
determined to publish his poems and to seek Elizabeth's 
favor; he publishes the first three books of the "Faery 
Queene " in 1590 ; although the poem is favorably received, 
Spenser's efforts to secure more congenial occupation than 
that offered by his Irish clerkship are at first unsuccessful ; 



SPENSER 41 

while in London he writes " Daphnaida," an elegy on Lady 
Douglass, and dedicates it to the Marchioness of Northamp- 
ton ; it is published at once, and in February, 1590-91, the 
Queen gives to Spenser a pension of ^50 a year; disap- 
pointed with the meagreness of the pension, he soon returns 
to Kilcolman Castle, where he writes "Colin Clout's Come 
Home Again," late in 1591, though it is not published till 
1595 ; in 1 59 1 his publisher collected some of Spenser's 
shorter poems and published them under the title of " Com- 
plaints," containing " Sundrie small Poems of the World's 
Vanitie ; " the volume included "The Ruines of Time," 
" The Teares of the Muses," " Virgil's Gnat " (a translation 
of the " Culex " erroneously ascribed to Virgil), "Mother 
Hubberd's Tale," " The Ruins of Rome " (translations from 
du Bellay), "Muipatmos," "Visions of the World's Vanitie," 
Bellay's "Visions," and Petrerches "Visions;" most of 
these poems were, Spenser said, "long rithems composed in 
the raw conceipt of my youth ; " owing to the satire on Lord 
Burghley contained in " The Ruines of Time" and that on 
court follies and vices in " Mother Hubberd's Tale," both 
poems were "called in;" a proposal by his publisher to 
issue others of Spenser's neglected or lost pieces was not 
favorably received. 

In 1592 he falls in love again — this time with Elizabeth, 
daughter of James Boyle, a relative of Richard Boyle ; Spen- 
ser's sonnets called " Amoretti " are really a diary of his 
courtship; he is married in June, 1594, probably at Cork, 
and the poet celebrates the event in his matchless " Epithala- 
mion ; " meantime his Irish neighbor, Lord Roche, contin- 
ues his litigation against Spenser, and in February, 1594, 
wins possession of a part of the poet's estate ; during the 
same year, and perhaps in consequence, Spenser assigns his 
clerkship of the Munster Council ; in 1595 Ponsonby, Spen- 
ser's London publisher, issues the " Amoretti " and " Epi- 
thalamion " and also "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," 



42 SPENSER 

with an appendix containing " Astrophel," Spenser's elegy 
on his friend Sidney; Ponsonby publishes Books IV., V., 
and VI. of the "Faery Queene " early in 1596, with alle- 
gorical illustrations, and binds in the same volume a second 
edition of the first three books ; the book becomes very pop- 
ular, but King James VI., of Scotland, complains to the Eng- 
lish ambassador concerning reflections on his mother, Mary 
Queen of Scots, and urges that Spenser be punished ; he is 
protected, however, by friends at Court, where he appears in 
the autumn of 1596, still hoping for preferment; while at 
Greenwich, in September, 1596, he publishes and dedicates 
to two countesses ''Four Hymnes," including his "Hymn 
in Honor of Love and Beauty," written long before, and the 
new hymns on " Heavenly Love" and " Heavenly Beauty." 
In November, 1596, while a guest at Essex House, Spenser 
writes his " Prothalamion " in honor of the marriage of the 
two daughters of his host, Edward Somerset, Earl of Worces- 
ter ; during this London visit of 1596 he writes also his prose 
pamphlet, " View of the Present State of Ireland," being 
based on his impressions of " these late wars in Mounster " — a 
pamphlet taking an extreme and most uncharitable view of all 
Irishmen, whom the poet thought worthy only of extermina- 
tion; Spenser also completes a work on the antiquities of 
Ireland, which has been entirely lost; early in 1597 he re- 
turns to Ireland, depressed in spirits and broken in health ; 
in September, 1598, he is made Sheriff of Cork ; the famous 
Tyrone Rebellion had already broken out, and Spenser, as 
Sheriff, was taken unawares; in October, 1598, the rebels 
overran all Munster, and burned Kilcolman Castle over Spen- 
ser's head ; the poet fled to Cork with his wife and four chil- 
dren ; Ben Jonson declares that one of Spenser's children per- 
ished in the flames; at Cork he draws up a " brief note of 
Ireland," in which he appeals to Elizabeth to "show unto 
these vile caitiffs" the terror of her wrath; in December, 
1598, Spenser is sent by the President of Munster to London 



SPENSER 43 

with a despatch reporting the progress of the rebellion ; he 
finds a lodging at an "inn" in King Street, Westminster, 
where he dies, January 16, 1598-99 ; Ben Jonson and other 
contemporary writers assert that he died " for lack of bread," 
but this is hardly credible in view of Spenser's pension and 
his official position as bearer of a message to the Court ; he 
was buried by friends in Westminster Abbey ; according to 
Cowden his hearse was "attended by poets, and mournful 
elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were 
thrown into his tomb." 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON SPENSER. 

Hazlitt, Wm., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, 188.1, G. 

Bell & Co., 45-58. 
Saintsbury, G. , " Elizabethan Literature." London, 1887, Macmillan, 

82-97. 
Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

4 : 265-354. 
Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, E. Moxon, 

21-34. 
Whipple, E. P., "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth." Boston, 1884, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 189-221. 
Taine, H. A, "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Henry Holt & Co., 1 : 194-226. 
Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 269-337. 
Scott, Sir Walter, " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." Philadelphia, 

Carey & Hart, 1 : 65-80. 
Church, R. W., "Spenser." London, 1888, Macmillan, v. index. 
Minto, W. , "Characteristics of English Poets." Edinburgh, 1874, 

Blackwood, 213-238. 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets." London, i83i, Macmillan, 1:275- 

284. 
Morley, Henry, "English Writers." London, 1892, Cassell & Co., 

9: 3H-4I5 and 437-45 1- 
Collier, W. F., "History of English Literature." London, 1892, 

Nelson, 120-128. 
DeVere, A., " Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." London, 1887, Macmillan, 

I-IOO. 



44 SPENSER 

Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge, 10-29. 
Reed, Henry, "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 

1 : 113-149- 
Phillips, M. G., "A Manual of English Literature." New York, 1893, 

Harper, 1 : 127-171. 
Blackwood's Magazine, 34 : 824-857 (Professor Wilson). 
Andover Review, 12 : 372-385, and 12 : 372-385, H. S. Pancoast. 
Edinburgh Review, 7: 203-217 (Sir Walter Scott). 
Poet Lore, I : 214-223 (Stopford Brooke). 
North American Review, 1 20 : 334-394 (J. R. Lowell). 
Atlantic Monthly, 21 : 395-405 (E. P. Whipple). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Rich Imagination — Idealism. — Lamb has fitly 
bestowed upon Spenser the title of "the poet's poet," and 
Scott declares that, from Cowley downward, every youth of 
imagination has been enchanted with the splendid legends of 
the " Faery Queene. " Milton directly acknowledges him as 
his master. 

"In the world into which Spenser carries us, there is 
neither time nor space, or rather it is outside of and inde- 
pendent of them both, and so is purely ideal, or, more 
truly, imaginary ; yet it is full of form, color, and all earthly 
luxury, and so far if not real yet apprehensible by the senses. 
He was not long in choosing between an unreality 
which pretended to be real and those everlasting realities of 
the mind which seem unreal only because they lie beyond 
the horizon of the every-day world and become visible only 
when the mirage of fancy lifts them up and hangs them in 
an ideal atmosphere. ... I have called the world to 
which Spenser transports us a world of unreality. I have 
wronged him. It is from pots and pans and stocks and futile 
gossip and inch-long politics that he emancipates us, and 
makes us free of that to-morrow, always coming and never 
come, where ideas shall reign supreme. He lifts everything, 



SPENSER 45 

not beyond recognition, but to an ideal distance, where no 
mortal, I had almost said human, speck is visible. Instead 
of the ordinary bridal gifts, he hallows his wife with an 
Epithalamion fit for a conscious goddess. . . . His 
fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, un- 
realizes everything at a touch. . . . The language and 
verse of Spenser at his best have an ideal lift in them, and 
there is scarcely any of our poets who can so hardly help be- 
ing poetical. . . . He who, when his singing robes were 
on, could never be tempted nearer to the real world than 
under some subterfuge of pastoral or allegory. ... It 
is evident that to him the Land of Faery was an unreal world 
of picture and illusion, in which he could shut himself up 
from the actual, with its shortcomings and failures. 
[< The Faery Queene ' is] full of life and light and the other- 
wcrldliness of poetry. . . . This place, somewhere be- 
tween mind and matter, between soul and sense, between the 
actual and the possible, is precisely the region which Spenser 
assigns to the poetic sensibility of impression. . . . His 
fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, un- 
realizes everything at a touch. . . . Other poets have 
held their mirrors up to nature, mirrors that differ very widely 
in the truth and beauty of the images they reflect ; but 
Spenser's is a magic glass, in which we see few shadows cast 
back from actual life, but visionary shapes conjured up by 
the wizard's art from some confusedly remembered past or 
some impossible future; it is like one of those still pools of 
mediaeval legend which covers some sunken city of the antique 
world ; a reservoir in which all our dreams seem to have been 
gathered. As we float upon it, we see that it pictures faithfully 
enough the summer clouds that drift over it, the trees that 
grow about its margin, but in the midst of these shadowy 
echoes of actuality we catch faint tones of bells that seem blown 
to us from beyond the horizon of time, and looking down into 
the clear depths, catch glimpses of towers and far-shining 



46 SPENSER 

knights and peerless dames that waver and are gone. Is it a 
world that ever was, or shall be, or can be, or but a delu- 
sion ? Spenser's world, real to him, is real enough for us to 
take a holiday in, and we may well be content with it when 
the earth we dwell on is often too real to allow of such vaca- 
tions. It is the same kind of world that Petrarca's Laura 
has walked in for five centuries with all ears listening for the 
music of her footfall. . . . He is a standing protest 
against the tyranny of the commonplace, and sows the seeds 
of a noble discontent with prosaic views of life and the dull 
uses to which it may be put." —Lowell. 

" He began to believe, with more than the usual faith of 
the poet, in the beautiful or terrible or fantastic shapes with 
which his fancy was peopled. . . . And it was this 
wonderful and various troop of ideal shapes, palpable to his 
own eye and domesticated to his own heart, that he sent 
forth in an endless succession of pictures through the magical 
pages of the 'Faery Queene.' . . . The inwardness of 
Spenser's genius, the constant reference of his creative faculty 
to internal ideals rather than to objective facts, has given his 
poem a special character of remoteness. . . . His cheer- 
fulness has no connection with mirth, but springs from his 
perception of an ideal life, which has become a reality to his 
heart and imagination." — E. P. Whipple. 

" In Spenser, we wander in another world among ideal be- 
ings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier 
nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills 
and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but 
as we expected to find it, and fulfils the delightful promise of 
our youth. He waves the wand of enchantment, and at once 
embodies airy beings and throws a delicious veil over all 
actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are 
poised on the wings of his imagination." — William Hazlitt. 

"Spenser's power of taking up real objects, persons, and 
incidents, of plunging these in some solvent of the imagina- 



SPENSER 47 

tion, and then of recreating them — the same and not the 
same — is manifest throughout. Everything has been sub- 
mitted to the shaping power of the imagination; everything 
has been idealized ; yet Spenser does not remove from real 
life, does not forsake his own country and his own time. 
The mere visible shows of Spenser's poem are in- 
deed goodly enough to beguile a summer's day in some old 
wood and to hold us from morning to evening in a waking 
dream. " — Edward Dowden. 

" He was pre-eminently a creator and a dreamer, and that 
most naturally, instinctively, unceasingly. . . . This 
fount of living and changing forms is inexhaustible in Spen- 
ser ; he is always imaging ; it is his specialty. He has but 
to close his eyes and apparitions arise ; they abound in him, 
crowd, overflow ; in vain he pours them forth ; they con- 
tinually float up, more copious and more dense. . . . To 
unfold these epic faculties and to display them in the sub- 
lime region where his soul is naturally at home, he requires 
an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, with 
personages who could hardly exist, and in a world which 
could never be. Magic is the mould of his mind, 

and impresses its shape upon all that he imagines or thirjks. 
Involuntarily he robs objects of their ordinary form. If he 
looks at a landscape, after an instant he sees it quite differ- 
ently. He carries it, unconsciously, into an enchanted 
land ; the azure heaven sparkles like a canopy of diamonds, 
meadows are clothed with flowers, a biped population flutters 
in the balmy air, palaces of jasper shine among the trees, 
radiant ladies appear, carved balconies above galleries of 
emerald. This unconscious toil of mind is like the slow 
crystallizations of nature. A moist twig is cast into the 
bottom of a mine, and is brought out again a hoop of dia- 
monds. . . . He leads us to the summit of fairy-land, 
soaring above history, on that extreme verge where objects 
vanish and pure idealism begins. . . . We perceive 



48 SPENSER 

that his characters are not flesh and blood, and that all these 
brilliant phantoms are phantoms and nothing more. We 
take pleasure in their brilliancy without believing in their 
substantiality ; we are interested in their doings without troub- 
ling ourselves about their misfortunes. We know that their 
tears and cries are not real. Our emotion is purified and 
raised. We do not fall into gross illusions ; we have that 
gentle feeling of knowing ourselves to be dreaming. We, 
like him, are a thousand leagues from actual life, beyond the 
pangs of painful pity, unmixed terror, violent and bitter 
hatred. We entertain only refined sentiments, partly 
formed, arrested at the very moment they were about to af- 
fect us with too sharp a stroke. . . . He is not yet 
settled and shut in by that species of exact common-sense 
which was to bound and cramp the whole modern civiliza- 
tion. In his heart he inhabits the poetic and shadowy land 
from which men were daily drawing further and further 
away. . . . He enters straightway upon the strangest 
dreams of the old story-tellers without astonishment, like a 
man who has still stranger dreams of his own. Enchanted 
castles, monsters and giants, duels in the woods, wandering 
ladies, all spring up under his hands, the mediaeval fancy with 
the mediaeval generosity, and it is just because the world is 
unreal that it so suits his humour. Imagination was never 
more prodigal or inventive." — Taine. 

"To the last it [his genius] moved in a world which was 
not real, which never had existed, which, anyhow, was only 
a world of memory and sentiment. He never threw himself 
frankly upon human life as it is; he always viewed it through 
a veil of mist which greatly altered its true colours, and often 
distorted its proportions. . . . The spell is to be found 
in the quaint stateliness of Spenser's imaginary world and its 
representatives. . . . The conventional supposition was 
that at the Court, though everyone knew better, all was per- 
petual sunshine, perpetual holiday, perpetual triumph, per- 



SPENSER 49 

petual love-making. It was the happy reign of the good and 
wise and lovely. It was the discomfiture of the base, the 
faithless, the wicked, the traitorous. This is what is reflected 
in Spenser's poem : at once, its stateliness (for there was no 
want of grandeur and magnificence in the public scene ever 
before Spenser's imagination) and its quaintness, because the 
whole outward apparatus of representation was borrowed 
from what was past, or from what did not exist, and implied 
surrounding circumstances in ludicrous contrast with fact." 
—R. W. Church. 

"To judge from internal evidence, no man ever lived 
more exclusively in and for poetry than Spenser. We try 
in vain for any term to express the voluptuous complete- 
ness of his immersion in the colours and music of poetry. He 
was a man of reserved and gentle disposition, and he turned 
luxuriously from the rough world of facts to the ampler ether, 
the diviner air, the softer and more resplendent forms of 
Arcadia and the delightful land of Faery. While the drama- 
tists were laboring to make the past present, his imagination 
worked in an opposite line : his effort was to remove hard, 
clear, visible, and tangible actualities to dreamy regions and 
there to reproduce them in a glorified state with softer and 
warmer forms and colours. . . . His own Pastoral land and 
Faery land he had furnished with a geography, a population, 
and a history of their own, and there chiefly his imagination 
loved to dwell and pursue its creative work." — Williai?i Minto. 

" Spenser is the farthest removed from the ordinary cares 
and haunts of the world of all the poets that ever wrote except, 
perhaps, Ovid ; and this, which is the reason why men of 
business and the world do not like him, constitutes his most 
bewitching charm with the poetical. . . . The poetic 
faculty is so abundantly and beautifully predominant in him 
above every other . . . that he has always been felt by 
his countrymen to be what Charles Lamb called him, ' the 
poet's poet.' " — Leigh Hunt. 
4 



50 SPENSER 

u If they [readers] want poetry, if they want to be trans- 
lated from a world which is not one of beauty into a world 
where the very uglinesses are beautiful, into a world of per- 
fect harmony in color and sound, of an endless sequence of 
engaging event and character, of noble passions and actions 
not lacking in their due contrast, then let them go to Spenser 
with a certainty of satisfaction." — George Saintsbury. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Bring with you all the Nymphs that you can heare 
Both of the rivers and the forrests greene 
And of the sea that neighbours to her neare : 

Al with gay girlands goodly wel beseene. 
And let them also with them bring in hand 

Another gay girland, 
For my fayre love of lillyes and of roses. 

And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread 
For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong, 
Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along, 
And diapred lyke the discolored mead." 

— Epithalam ion . 

11 Of fayre Elisa [Elizabeth] be your silver song, 

That blessed wight. 
The flowre of virgins ; may shee flourish long 

In princely plight ! 
For shee is Syrinx daughter without spotte, 
Which Pan, the shepheard's God, of her begot : 

So sprong her grace 

Of heavenly race, 
No mortall blemishe may her blotte. 

" See, where she sits upon the grassie greene, 
(O seemely sight !) 
Yclad in scarlot, like a mayden Queen, 
And ermines white : 



SPENSER 51 

Upon her head a Cremosin coronet, 
With damask roses and daffodillies set ; 

Bay leaves betweene, 

And primroses greene, 
Embellish the sweete violete." 

— The Shefiheards Calendar. 

u A satyre's sonne, yborne in forrest wyld, 

By straunge adventure as it did betyde, 
And there begotten of a lady myld, 

Fayre Thyamis, the daughter of Labryde ; 
That was in sacred bandes of wedlocke tyde 

To Therioh, a loose, unruly swayne, 
Who had more joy to raunge the forrest wyde, 

And chase the salvage beast with busie payne, 
Then serve his ladies love, and waste in pleasures vayne," 

— The Faery Queene. 

2. Incongruity — Artificiality. — Spenser has been gen- 
erally criticised for allowing the " mystic enthusiasm " of his 
genius to carry him into frequent inconsistencies. Campbell 
calls his shepherds "parsons in disguise, who converse about 
heathen divinities and points of Christian theology." 

" Spenser's design was too large and complicated for his 
imagination to grasp as a whole. It was the necessary condition 
of a poem thus sociably blending Christian and Pagan beliefs, 
Platonic ideas and barbaric superstitions, that its action should 
occur in what Coleridge happily calls mental space. Truth 
of scenery, truth of climate, truth of locality, truth of costume, 
could have no binding authority in the everywhere and no- 
where of fairy land. . . . It is objected, for example, 
that, in his enumeration of the trees in one of his forests, he 
associates trees which in nature do not coexist ; but his forest 
is fairy land. The form of Spenser's ' Shepherd's Calen- 
dar ' is absurdly artificial, if looked at merely from the out- 
side, but that is not, perhaps, the wisest way to look at any- 
thing, except a jail. . . . The spirit of it is fresh and 
original. . . . There is something fairly ludicrous in 



52 SPENSER 

such a duality as that of Prince Arthur and the Earl of Leices- 
ter, Arthegall and Lord Gray, and Belphoebe and Eliza- 
beth. The reality seems to heighten the improbability, already 
hard enough to manage. ... To reign in the air was 
certainly Spenser's function, . . . but being too poetical 
is the rarest fault of poets. . . . What practical man 
ever left such an heirloom to his countryman as the ' Faery 
Queene ? ' The bent of his mind was toward a Pla- 

tonic mysticism." — Lowell. 

li Here and there, amid armor and passages of arms, he 
distributes satyrs, nymphs, Diana, Venus, like Greek statues 
amid the turrets and lofty trees of an English park. There is 
nothing forced in the union ; the ideal epic, like a superior 
heaven, receives and harmonizes the two worlds ; a. beautiful 
pagan dream carries on a beautiful dream of chivalry ; the 
link consists in the fact that they are both beautiful. At this 
elevation the poet has ceased to observe the differences of 
races and civilizations. He can introduce into his picture 
whatever he will ; his only reason is, ' That suited ; ' and 
there could be no better. Under the glossy-leaved oaks, by 
the old trunk so deeply rooted in the ground, he can see two 
knights cleaving each other and the next instant a company 
of Fauns, who come there to dance. The beams of light 
which have poured down upon the velvet moss can reveal the 
dishevelled locks and white shoulders of nymphs. Do we not 
see it in Rubens ? And what signify discrepancies in the 
happy and sublime illusions of fancy? Are there more dis- 
crepancies ? Who perceives them ? Who feels them ? Who 
does not feel, on the contrary, that, to speak the truth, there 
is but one world, that of Plato and the poets ; that actual 
phenomena are but outlines — mutilated, incomplete, and 
blurred outlines — wretched abortions scattered here and there 
on Time's track, like fragments of clay, half moulded, then 
cast aside, lying in an artist's studio ; that, after all, invisible 
forces and ideas, which forever renew the actual existences, 



SPENSER 53 

attain their fulfilment only in imaginary existences ; and that 
the poet, in order to express nature in its entirety, is obliged 
to embrace in his sympathy all the ideal forms by which 
nature reveals itself? ... In fact, there are six poems, 
each of a dozen cantos, in which the action is ever diverging 
and converging again, becoming confused and starting again ; 
and all these imaginings of antiquity and of the Middle Ages 
are, I believe, combined in it. The knight < pricks along the 
plaine,' among the trees, and at a crossing of the paths meets 
other knights with whom he engages in combat ; suddenly, 
from within a cave, appears a monster, half woman and half 
serpent, surrounded by a hideous offspring; further on, a giant 
with three bodies ; then a dragon, great as a hill, with sharp 
talons and vast wings. For three days he fights him, and, 
twice overthrown, he comes to himself only by aid of ' a 
gracious ointment. ' After that there are savage tribes to be 
conquered, castles surrounded by flames to be taken. Mean- 
while ladies are wandering in the midst of forests on white 
palfreys, exposed to the assaults of miscreants, now guarded 
by a lion which follows them. Magicians work manifold 
charms ; palaces display their festivities ; tilt-yards provide 
endless tournaments ; sea-gods, nymphs, fairies, kings inter- 
mingle in these feasts, surprises, dangers." — Taine. 

" His own errors are the confusion and inconsistency ad- 
mitted in the stories and allegorical personages of the ancients 
and the absurd mixture of Christian and heathenish allusions." 
— Thomas Chalmers. 

" To the last it [his genius] allied itself in form, at least, 
with the artificial. ... A fantastic basis, varying ac- 
cording to the conventions of the fashion, was held essential 
for the representation of the ideal. ... A masquerade 
was necessary. . . . Spenser submitted to this fashion 
from first to last. When first he ventured on a considerable 
poetic enterprise, he spoke his thoughts, not in his own name, 
nor as his contemporaries ten years later did, through the 



54 SPENSER 

mouth of characters in a tragic or comic drama, but through 
imaginary rustics, to whom everyone else in the world was a 
rustic, and lived among the sheep-folds, with a background 
of downs or vales or fields and the open sky above. . . . 
At first acquaintance, the ' Faery Queene ' to many of us has 
been disappointing. It has seemed not only antique but ar- 
tificial. It has seemed fantastic. It has seemed, we cannot 
help avowing, tiresome. It is not till the early appearances 
have worn off and we have learned to make many allowances 
and to surrender ourselves to the feelings and the standards 
by which it claims to affect and govern us that we really find 
under what noble guidance we are proceeding and what subtle 
and varied spells are ever around us. . . . It seems to 
us odd that peaceful sheep-cotes and love-sick swains should 
stand for the world of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cun- 
ning statecraft and relentless cruelty should be represented by 
the generous follies of an imaginary chivalry. But it was the 
fashion which Spenser found, and he accepted it. 
Strong in the abundant but unsifted learning of his day, a 
style of learning which, in his case, was strangely inaccurate, 
he not only mixed the past with the present, fairy-land with 
politics, mythology with the most serious Christian ideas, but 
he often mixed together the very features which are most dis- 
cordant in the colors, forms, and methods by which he sought 
to produce the effect of his pictures. . . . There is a 
majestic unconsciousness of all violations of probability and 
of the strangeness of the combinations which it unrolls before 
us. The perpetual love-making, as one of the first 

duties and necessities of a noble life, the space which it must 
fill in the cares and thoughts of all gentle and high-reaching 
spirits, ... all this is so far apart from what we know 
of actual life, the life not merely of work and business but the 
life of affection and even of passion, that it makes the picture 
of which it is so necessary a part seem to us in the last degree 
unreal, unimaginable, grotesquely ridiculous. ... It is, 



SPENSER 55 

of course, a purely artificial reading of the facts of human life 
and feeling. This all-absorbing, all-embracing passion of love, 
at least this way of talking about it, was the fashion of the 
Court. Further, it was the fashion of poetry, which he in- 
herited ; and he was not the man to break through the strong 
bounds of custom and authority. He took what he found ; 
what was his own was his treatment of it. He did not trouble 
himself with inconsistencies or see absurdities and incongru- 
ities."— R. W. Church. 

" Shepherds in real life do not sit in the shade playing on 
pan-pipes, improvising songs for wagers of lambs and curiously 
carved bowls, and discoursing in rhymed verse about morality, 
religion, and politics. . . . But we miss the whole in- 
tention and effect of the poetry if we exact from the poet an 
adherence to the conditions of the actual life of shepherds. 
The picturesque environment of hill, wood, dale, silly sheep, 
and ravenous wild beasts is all that the poet cares for : if he 
helps us to remember that we are amongst such scenery, he 
has fulfilled his design. . . . If we would enjoy Spenser's 
Arcadia, we must simply let ourselves float into a dreamland 
of unsubstantial form and colour. The pastoral surroundings 
are of value only in so far as they colour and transfigure the 
sentiments of the poetry. . . . Spenser has been accused 
of bad taste in mixing up heathen mythology with the nar- 
ratives of the Bible. He represents Tantalus and Pontius 
Pilate suffering in the same place of punishment. The answer 
that wicked men of all ages and creeds may reasonably be 
supposed to suffer together, is complete. . . . He has 
been accused of extravagant violations of probability. To 
this* it may be answered that, when we consent to be intro- 
duced to Faery land, we sign a dispensation from the ordinary 
conditions of life." — William Minto. 



56 SPENSER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, 

The sailing pine ; the cedar proud and tall ; 
The vine-prop elm ; the poplar never dry ; 

The builder oak, sole king of forests all ; 
The aspen good for staves ; the cypress funeral ; 

The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors 
And poets sage ; the fir that weepeth still ; 

The willow, worn of forlorn paramours ; 
The yew, obedient to the bender's will ; 
The birch for shafts ; the sallow for the mill ; 

The myrrh, sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound ; 
The war-like beech, the ash for nothing ill ; 

The fruitful olive and the plaintane round." 

— The Faery Queene. 

*' The god of Shepheards, Tityrus, is dead, 

Who taught me homely, as I can, to make ; 
He, whilst he lived, was the soveraigne head 

Of shepheards all that bene with love ytake ; 
Well couth he wayle his woes, and lightly slake 

The flames which love within his heart had bredd, 
And tell us mery tales to keepe us wake, 

The while our sheep about us safely fedde. 
Nowe dead he is, and lyeth wrapt in lead, 

(Oh ! why should Death on him such outrage show ? ) 
And all hys passing skil with hym is fledde, 

The fame whereof doth dayly greater growe. 
But if on me some little drops would flow 

Of that the spring was in his learned hedde, 
I woulde learne these woods to wayle my woe, 

And teach the trees their trickling teares to shedde." 

— The Shepheards Calendar. 

" It there befell, as I the fields did range 

Fearlesse and free, a faire young Lionesse, 
White as the native rose before the chaunge 

Which Venus' blood did in her leaves impresse. 



SPENSER 57 

I spied playing on the grassie playne 

Her youthfull sports and kindlie wantonnesse, 
That did all other beasts in beawtie staine. 

Much was I moved at so goodly sight, 
Whose like before mine eye had seldome seene, 

And gan to cast how I her compasse might, 
And bring to hand that yet had never beene ; 

So well I wrought with mildnes and with paine, 
That I her caught disporting on the greene, 

And brought away fast bound with silver chaine." 

— Daphnaida. 

3. Exquisite Melody. — Spenser was a great metrician. 
" All poets," says Professor Wilson, " have, since Warton's 
time, agreed in thinking the Spenserian stanza the finest ever 
conceived by the soul of man." Spenser was indeed to 
prove 

" That no tongue hath the muse's heired 
For verse, and that sweet music to the ear 
Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this." 

" He had that subtle perfection of phrase and that happy co- 
alescence of music and meaning, where each reinforces the 
other, that define a man as poet and make all ears converts 
and partisans. . . . No other English poet has found the 
variety and compass which enlivened the octave stanza under 
his sensitive touch. . . . The music makes great part of 
the meaning, and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. 
He found the octave stanza not roomy enough, so 
first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added 
line over into an Alexandrine, in which the melody of one 
sta'nza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that 
which is to follow. . . . His great glory is that he taught 
his own language to sing and move to measure harmonious 
and noble. The service which Spenser did to our literature 
by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine 
ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue, 



58 SPENSER 

that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made 
possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffnes*s of ' Ferrex 
and Porrex ' to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shake- 
speare. . . . There is no ebb and flow in his meter 
more than on the shores of the Adriatic, but wave follows 
wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding 
back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward 
by the next. . . . They [Spenser's dreams] seem singing 
to you as the sirens to Guyon, and we linger like him." — 
Lowell. 

11 What he did was to reveal to English ears as it had 
never been revealed before, at least since the days of Chaucer, 
the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible versatil- 
ity of the English tongue. . . . There is one portion of 
the beauty of the ' Faery Queene ' which, in its perfection and 
fulness, had never yet been reached in English poetry. This 
was the music and melody of his verse. It was this wonder- 
ful, almost unfailing, sweetness of numbers which probably 
as much as anything else set the ' Faery Queene ' at once above 
all contemporary poetry. Spenser was the first to show that 
he had acquired a command over what had hitherto been 
heard only in exquisite fragments, passing too soon into 
roughness and confusion. It would be too much to say that 
his cunning never fails, that his ear is never dull or off its 
guard. But when the length and magnitude of the composi- 
tion are considered, with the restraints imposed by the new 
nine-line stanza, however convenient it may have been, the 
vigor, the invention, the volume and rush of language, and 
the keenness and truth of ear amid its diversified tasks are in- 
deed admirable, which could keep up so prolonged and so 
majestic a stream of original and varied poetical melody. U 
his stanzas are monotonous, it is with the grand monotony 
of the sea-shore, where billow follows billow, each swelling 
diversely, and broken into different curves and waves upon its 
mounting surface, till at last it falls over and spreads and 



SPENSER 59 

rushes up in a last long line of foam upon the beach." — 
J?. W. Church. 

" Spenser's verse is like a river, wide and deep and strong, 
but moderating its waves and conveying them all in a steady, 
soft, irresistible sweep forward. . . . No poem runs with 
such an entire absence of effort, with such an easy eloquence, 
with such an effect, as has been said already, of flowing water 
as the ' Faery Queene ' — the inimitably fluent and velvet me- 
dium which seems to lull some readers to inattention by its 
very smoothness and deceive others into a belief in its lack of 
matter by the very finish and brilliancy of its form." — George 
Saintsbury. 

" His best thoughts were born in music. The spirit of 
poetry is not only felt in his sentiments and made visible in 
his imagery, but it steals out in the recurring chimes of his 
complicated stanza." — E. P. Whipple. 

"To get a full notion of Spenser's power of 'ravishing 
human sense ' with word-music, one must read at least a 
canto, if not a whole book of the 'Faery Queen.' The 
dreamy, melodious softness of his numbers and his ideas has 
something of the luxurious charm that the song of the mer- 
maids had for the ear of Guyon." — William Minto. 

"Then comes the ' Epithalamion ' — the marriage-song 
made by the poet himself for his own bride, in which the 
sweet music that runs through all Spenser's verse, and makes it 
answerable to Milton's praise of divine philosophy as 'a per- 
petual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns,' 
fills us with something like his own sense of fullest earthly 
joy." — Henry Morley. 

"His versification is almost perpetual honey." — Leigh 
Hunt. 



6o SPENSER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, 
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, 
And blesseth her with his two happy hands, 
How the red roses flush up in her cheekes, 
And the pure snow, with goodly vermill stayne, 
Like crimsin dyde in grayne : 
That even th' angels, which continually 
About the sacred altare doe remaine, 
Forget their service and about her fly, 
Ofte peeping in her face, that seems more fayre 
The more they on it stare. 
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, 
Are governed with goodly modesty, 
That suffers not one looke to glaunce awry, 
Which may let in a little thought unsownd. 
Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand, 
The pledge of all our band ! 
Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing, 
That all the woods may answere, and your eccho ring." 

— Epithala m ion. 

" It was upon a holiday, 

When shepheardes groomes han leave to playe, 

I cast to goe a shooting. 

Long wandring up and downe the land 

With bowe and bolts in either hand, 

For birds in bushes tooting *, 

At length within an Yvie todde * *, 

(There shrouded was the little God) 

I heard a busie bustling. 

I bent my bolt against the bush, 

Listening if anything did rushe, 

But then heard no more rustling : 



With that sprong forth a naked swayne 
With spotted wings, like Peacock's trayne, 



SPENSER 6l 

And laughing lope to a tree ; 

His gylden quiver at his backe, 

And silver bowe, which was but slacke, 

Which lightly he bent at me : 

That seeing, I levelde againe 

And shott at him with might and maine, 

As thick as it had hayled." 

— The Sheftheards Calendar, 

" Ne sufifereth it [love] uncomely idlenesse, 
In his free thought to build her sluggish nest ; 
Ne sufifereth it thought of ungentlenesse 
Ever to creepe into his noble brest ; 
But to the highest and the worthiest 
Lifteth it up that els would lowly fall : 
It lettes not fall, it lettes it not to rest ; 
It lettes not scarse this prince to breath at all. 
But to his first poursuit him forward still doth call." 

— The Faery Queene. 

4. Perception of Beauty — Sensitiveness. — "Spen- 
ser's perception of beauty of all kinds was singularly and 
characteristically quick and sympathetic. It was one of his 
great gifts ; perhaps the most special and unstinted. Except 
Shakespeare, who had it with other and greater gifts, no one 
in that time approached to Spenser in feeling the presence of 
that commanding and mysterious idea, compounded of so 
many things, yet of which the true secret escapes us still, to 
which we give the name of beauty. . y A beautiful 

scene, a beautiful person, a beautiful poem, a mind and char- 
acter with that combination of charms, which, for want of 
another word, we call by that half-spiritual, half-material word 
' beautiful,' at once set his imagination at work to respond to 
it and reflect it. Say what we will, and a great 

deal may be said, of his lavish profusion, his heady and un- 
controlled excess, in the richness of picture and imagery in 
which he indulges, still there it lies before us, like the most 



62 SPENSER 

gorgeous of summer gardens, in the glory and brilliancy of its 
varied blooms, in the wonder of its strange forms of life, in the 
changefulness of its exquisite and delicious scents. No one 
who cares for poetic beauty can be insensible to it. He may 
prefer something more severe and chastened. He may observe 
on the waste of wealth and power. He may blame the prodi- 
gal expense of language and the long spaces which the poet 
takes up to produce his effect. He may often dislike or dis- 
trust the moral aspect of the poet's impartial sensitiveness 
to all outward beauty. . . . But there is no gainsaying 
the beauty which never fails and disappoints, open the poem 
where you will. There is no gainsaying its variety, often so 
unexpected and novel." — R. W. Church. 

"He had that perception of the loveliness of things, and 
that joy in the perception, which makes continual poetic crea- 
tion a necessity of existence. . . . ' The Faery Queene ' 
proves that the perception of the beautiful can make the heart 
more abidingly glad than the perception of the ludicrous." 
— E. P. Whipple. 

" He is, of all our poets, the most truly sensuous, using the 
word as Milton probably meant it when he said that poetry 
should be ' simple, sensuous, and passionate.' . . . Every 
one of Spenser's senses was as exquisitely alive to the impressions 
of material, as every organ of his soul was to those of spiritual 
beauty. . . . We sometimes feel in reading him as if he 
were the pure sense of the beautiful incarnated to the one end 
that he might interpret it to our duller perceptions. So ex- 
quisite was his sensibility* that with him sensation and intellec- 
tion seem identical, and we 'can almost say his body thought,' 
. . . So entirely are beauty and the delight in it the native 
element of Spenser that, whenever, in the ' Faery Queene ' you 
come suddenly on the moral, it gives you a shock of unpleas- 
ant surprise, a kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit 
of gravel in a dish of strawberries and cream. . . . While 
the senses of most men live in the cellar, his 'were laid in 



SPENSER 63 

a large upper chamber which opened toward the sunrising.' 
Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can 
tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever 
wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the 
brain be silent for a time, let him read the ' Faery Queene.' 
There is the land of pure heart's ease, where no ache or sorrow 
of spirit can enter. . . . This exaltation with which love 
sometimes subtilizes the nerves of coarsest men so that they 
feel and see, not the thing as it seems to others, but the 
beauty of it, the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in 
it, would appear to have been the normal condition of Spen- 
ser." — Lowell. 

" Beauty, Spenser maintained, is twofold. There is a 
beauty which is a mere pasture to the eye ; it is a spoil for 
which we grow greedy ; . . . and there is the higher 
beauty of which the peculiar quality is a penetrating radiance; 
it illuminates all that comes into its presence ; it is a beam 
from the divine fount of light. . . . Upon the whole, 
the 'Faery Queene,' if nothing else, is at least a labyrinth of 
beauty, a forest of old romance, in which it is possible to lose 
oneself more irrecoverably amid the tangled luxury of loveli- 
ness than elsewhere in English poetry. . . . But Spenser's 
rare sensibility to beauty would have found itself ill content if 
he had had mere solitude of nature, however fair, to contem- 
plate. In his perfect joy in the presence of human beauty he 
is thoroughly a man of the Renaissance. The visions which 
he creates of man and woman cast a spell over their creator ; 
he cannot withdraw his gaze from the creatures of his imagi- 
nation ; he must satiate his senses with their loveliness; all his 
being is thrilled with a pure ecstasy as he continues to gaze. 
And what form of human beauty is there to which Spenser 
does not pay a poet's homage? . . . But more than any 
other form of beauty, that of womanhood charms Spenser, 
renders his imagination ' empassioned,' or calms and com- 
pletely satisfies it." — Edward Dowden. 



64 SPENSER 

"Above all, his was a soul captivated by sublime and 
chaste beauty, eminently platonic. . . . He has an ado- 
ration for beauty worthy of Dante and Plotinus. And this 
because he never considers it a mere harmony of color and 
form but an emanation of unique, heavenly, imperishable 
beauty, which no mortal eye can see, and which is the master- 
piece of the great Author of the worlds. Bodies only render it 
visible ; it does not live in them ; charm and attraction are 
not in things but in the immortal idea which shines through 
them. . . . This is the greatness of his work; he has 
succeeded in seizing beauty in its fulness because he cared 
for nothing but beauty. . . . Each story is modulated 
with respect to another and all with respect to a certain effect 
which is being worked out. Thus a beauty issues from this 
harmony — the beauty in the poet's heart — which his whole 
soul strives to express ; a noble and yet a cheerful beauty, 
made up of moral elevation and sensuous seductions, English 
in sentiment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern 
in its perfection, representing a unique and wonderful epoch, 
the appearance of paganism in a Christian race and the wor- 
ship of form by an imagination of the North." — Taine. 

" For the lover of poetry, for the reader who understands 
and can receive the poetic charm, the revelation of beauty in 
metrical language, no English poem is the superior, or, range 
and variety being considered, the equal of the ' Faery Queene.' 
He is the poet of all others for those who seek in 
poetry only poetical qualities." — George Saintsbury. 

" The love of beauty ... is the moving principle of 
his mind. . . . He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern 
magnificence or the still solitude of a hermit's cell, in the ex- 
tremes of sensuality or refinement." — William Hazlitt. 

" He is more luxurious than Ariosto or Tasso, more haunted 
with the presence of beauty." — Leigh Hunt. 



SPENSER 65 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And over all of purest gold was spred 
A trayle of y vie in his native hew ; 
For the rich metall was so coloured 
That wight who did not well avis' d it vew 
Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew ; 
Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe 
That themselves dipping in the silver dew 
Their fleecy flowres they fearefully did steepe, 
Which drops of christall seemed for wantonese to weepe." 

— The Faery Queene. 

u With that I saw two swannes of goodly he we 
Come softly swimming downe along the Lee ; 
Two fairer birds I yet did never see ; 
The snow which doth the top of Pindus strew, 
Did never whiter shew 

Nor Jove himselfe, when he a swan would be 
For love of Leda, whiter did appeare ; 
Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he ; 
Yet not so white as these, nor nothing neare ; 
So purely white they were 

That even the gentle streame the which them bare 
Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare 
To wet their silken feathers, least they might 
Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre, 
And marre their beauties bright, 
That shone as heavens light, 
Against their brydale day, which was not long : 
Sweet Themmes ! runne softly till I end my song." 

— Prothalamion. 

" Lastly his shinie wings as silver bright, 
Painted with thousand colours passing farre 
All painter's skill, he did about him dight : 
Not halfe so manie sundrie colours arre 
In Iris bow ; ne heaven doth shine so bright, 
Distinguished with manie a twinckling starre ; 
Nor Junoes bird, in her ey-spotted traine, 
So many goodly colours doth containe." — Muiopotmos. 
5 . . 



66 SPENSER 

5. Moral Elevation — Manliness. — " The moral 
picture presented in the ' Faery Queene ' is the ideal of noble 
manliness in Elizabeth's time. We must admire the intrinsic 
nobleness of Spenser's general aim, his conception of human 
life, at once so exacting and so indulgent, his high ethical 
principles and ideals, his unfeigned honor for all that is pure 
and brave and unselfish and tender, his generous estimate of 
what is due from man to man of service, affection, and fidel- 
ity. . . . Spenser had in his nature, besides sweet- 
ness, his full proportion of the stern and high manliness of 
his generation ; noble and heroic ideals captivate him by 
their attractions. He kindles naturally and genuinely at what 
proves and draws out men's courage, their self-command, 
their self-sacrifice. He can moralize with the best in terse 
and deep-reaching apothegms of melancholy or even despair- 
ing experience. . . . That character of the completed 
man, raised above what is poor and low, and governed by 
noble tempers and pure principles, has in Spenser two con- 
spicuous elements. In the first place it is based on manliness. 
The manliness which is at the foundation of all 
that is good in them [his personages illustrating the virtues] is 
a universal quality common to them all, rooted and imbedded 
in the governing idea or standard of moral character in the 
poem. The substance of the ' Faery Queene ' is the poet's phi- 
losophy of life. . . . It is the quality of soul which frankly 
accepts the conditions in human life of labor, of obedience, of 
effort, of unequal success, which does not quarrel with them or 
evade them, but takes for granted with unquestioning alacrity 
that man is called — by his call to high aims and destiny — to 
a continual struggle with difficulty, with pain, with evil, and 
makes it a point of honor not to be dismayed or wearied out 
by them. . . . It is a cheerful and serious willingness for 
hard work and endurance as being inevitable and very bearable 
necessities, together with even a pleasure in encountering trials 
which put a man on his mettle, an enjoyment of the contest 



SPENSER 6? 

and the risk, even in play. It is the quality which seizes on 
the paramount idea of duty, as something which leaves a man 
no choice." — R. IV. Church. 

"We are in communion with a nature in which the most 
delicate, the most voluptuous sense of beauty is in harmony 
with the austerest recognition of the paramount obligations of 
goodness and rectitude. The beauty of material objects never 
obscures to him the beauty of holiness." — E. P. Whipple. 

"Spenser's notions of love were so nobly pure as not to 
disqualify him for achieving the quest of the Holy Grail. 
His rebukes of clerical worldliness are in the Pu- 
ritan tone. . . . No man can read the ' Faery Queene ' 
and be anything but the better for it. Through that rude age 
when Maids of Honor drank beer for breakfast and Hamlet 
could say a gross thing to Ophelia, he passes serenely, ab- 
stracted and high, the Don Quixote of poets. . . . With 
a purity like that of thrice bolted snow, he had none of its 
coldness. ' ' — Lowell. 

u We find in this [' Faery Queene,'] and subordinately in his 
other works, a mind of uncommon exaltation and an earnest 
love of virtue and nobleness, and we surmise a character to 
correspond. . . . Among very great poems, the ' Divina 
Commedia ' of Dante and the ' Faery Queene ' of Spenser stand 
alone in taking as their direct theme moral or spiritual virtue, 
to be exhibited, enforced, and illustrated." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" The poet freely chooses what pleases his fancy in classical 
or neo-classical mythology ; yet at heart he is almost Puritan. 
Not, indeed, Puritan in any turning away from innocent de- 
lights ; not Puritan in casting dishonor on our earthly life, its 
beauty, its splendor, its joy, its passion; but Puritan as Milton 
was when he wrote ' Lycidas,' in his weight of moral purpose, 
in his love of a grave plainness in religion and of humble 
laboriousness in those who are shepherds under Christ. . . . 
To render men's feelings more sane, pure, and permanent — 
this surely was included in the great design of the ' Faery 



68 SPENSER 

Queene ; ' it was deliberately kept before him as an object by 
Spenser — ' our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare to name 
a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. ' . . . The ethical 
teaching of Spenser, extracted from his poetry, is worthy a 
careful study. Ascetic in the best sense of that word Spenser 
assuredly was ; he desired to strengthen every part of our 
nature by heroic discipline and to subordinate the lower parts 
to the higher, so that, if strong, they might be strong for ser- 
vice, not for mastery. ... By his enthusiasm on behalf 
of the noblest moral qualities, by his strenuous joy in the 
presence of the noblest human creatures — man and woman — 
Spenser breathes into us a breath of life which has an anti- 
septic power, which kills the germs of disease, and is antago- 
nistic to the relaxed fibre, the lethargy, the dissolution or dis- 
integrating life-in-death of sensuality. Any heroism of man 
or woman is like wine to gladden Spenser's heart ; we see 
through the verse how it quickens the motion of his blood. 
A swift, clear flame of sympathy, like an answering beacon lit 
upon the high places of his soul, even though it be an imagined 
one, summoning his own. . . . To incite and to conduct 
men to an active virtue is not only the express purpose of the 
' Faery Queene,' but as far as a poem can render such service, 
the ' Faery Queene ' doubtless has actually served to train 
knights of holiness, knights of temperance, knights of cour- 
tesy. . . . He strove, as far as in him lay, to breed a 
race of high-souled English gentlemen, who should have none 
of the meanness of the libertine, none of the meanness of the 
precisian. ' ' — Edward Dowden. 

" Milton himself, the severe Milton, extolled his [Spen- 
ser's] moral teachings ; his philosophical idealism is evidently 
no mere poet's plaything or parrot's lesson, but thoroughly 
thought out and believed in." — George Saintsbury. 

"It [the ' Faery Queen '] is a continual, deliberate en- 
deavor to enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feelings of 
an inquiring and romantic age on the side of goodness and 



SPENSER 69 

faith, of unity and justice. . . . Spenser, then, was 
essentially a sacred poet; but the delicacy and insinuating 
gentleness of his disposition were better fitted to the veiled 
than to the direct mode of instruction." — -John Keble. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" All places they [Ignorance and Barbarism] with follie have 
possest, 

And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine ; 
But me have banished, with all the rest 

That whilome wont to wait upon my traine, 
Fine Counterfesaunce and unhurtfull Sport, 
Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort. 



" But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen 
Large streams of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe, 

Scorning the boldnes of such base-born men, 
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, 

Doth rather chose to sit in idle Cell, 

Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell." 

— The Teares of the Muses. 

" Love, lift me up upon thy golden wings, 

From this base world unto thy heavens hight, 
Where I may see those admirable things 

Which there thou workest by thy soveraine might, 
Farre above feeble reach of earthly sight, 
That I thereof an heavenly hymne may sing 
Unto the God of Love, high heavens king. 

Many lewd layes (ah ! woe is me the more ! ) 
In praise of that mad fit which fooles call love, 

I have in th' heat of youth made heretofore, 
That in light wits did loose affection move ; 
But all those follies now I do reprove, 

And turned have the tenor of my string, 

The heavenly prayses of true love to sing." 

— An Hymne of Heavenly Love. 



70 SPENSER 

" Let none then blame me, if in discipline 

Of vertue and of civill uses lore, 
I doe not forme them to the common line 

Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore, 

But to the antique use which was of yore, 
When good was onely for it selfe desyred, 

And all men sought their owne, and none no more ; 
When Justice was not for most meed out-hyred, 
But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred." 

— The Faery Queene. 

6. Reverence for Womanhood. — "Spenser is the 
creator of some of the most exquisite embodiments of female 
excellence — the man who had the high honor of saying of 
women, 

* For demigods they be, and first did spring 
From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine.' 

That celestial light which occasionally touches his page with 
an ineffable beauty, and which gave to him in his own time 
the name of 'the heavenly Spenser,' is a more wonderful 
emanation from his mind than its subtlest melodies. We es- 
pecially feel this in his ideal delineations of woman, in which 
he has only been exceeded by Shakespeare. . . . He 
has been called the poet's poet; he should also be called the 
woman's poet, for the feminine element in his genius is its 
loftiest, deepest, most angelic element. . . . The tender- 
ness, the ethereal softness and grace, the moral purity, the 
sentiment untainted by sentimentality, which characterize 
his impersonations of female excellence, show, too, that the 
poet's brain had been fed from his heart, and that reverence 
for woman was the instinct of his sensibility before it was con- 
firmed by the insight of his imagination." — E. P. Whipple. 
" He pauses, after relating a lovely instance of chastity, to 
exhort women to modesty. He pours out the wealth of his 
respect and tenderness at the feet of his heroines. If any 



SPENSER 71 

coarse man insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the 
gods. Never does he bring them on his stage without adorn- 
ing their name with splendid eulogy." — Taine. 

"For Spenser, behind each woman made to worship or 
love rises a sacred presence — Womanhood itself. Her beauty 
of face and limb is but a manifestation of the invisible beauty, 
and this is of one kin with the Divine Wisdom and the Divine 
Love. . . . Spenser's manner of portraiture seems to be 
at its best in female figures. ' The perfection of woman,' said 
Coleridge, 'is to be characterless,' meaning that no single 
prominent quality, however excellent, can equal in beauty 
and excellence a well -developed, harmonious nature. Spen- 
ser loved also this harmony of character, and he found it, or 
believed he found it, more in woman than in man." — Edward 
Dow den. 

" Una is one of the noblest contributions which poetry has 
ever made to its great picture gallery of character. 
Britomart is the loftiest of Spenser's heroines. She is not 
woman unsexed, but woman raised above woman, and there- 
fore woman still. . . . The mode in which Spenser 
associated the virtues as well as the graces with his special idea 
of womanhood — an idea very remote from that common in 
our days — is nowhere more beautifully illustrated than in 
Book IV., canto IX., where Scudamour describes the temple 
of Venus and the recovery of his lost Amoret." — Aubrey Dj 
Vere. 

"Where else is woman, in her pure ideal, still so humanly 
beautiful?" — Professor Wilson [Cristopher North]. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But if ye saw that which no eyes can see, 
The inward beauty of her lively spright, 
Garnisht with heavenly guifts of high degree, 
Much more then would ye wonder at that sight, 



72 SPENSER 

And stand astonisht like to those which red 
Medusaes mazeful hed. 

There dwels sweet Love and constant Chastity, 
Unspotted Fayth and comely Womanhood, 
Regard of Honour and mild Modesty ; 

There Vyrtue raynes as Queene in royal throne, 

And giveth lawes alone, 
The which the base affections doe obay, 

And yeeld theyr services unto her will ; 
Ne thought of things uncomely ever may 

Thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill." 

— Epithalamion. 

*' Nought is there under heav'ns wide hollownesse, 

That moves more deare compassion of mind, 
Than beautie brought t' unworthy wretchednesse 

Through envies snares or fortunes freaks unkind. 

I, whether lately through her brightness blynd, 
Or through allegeaunce and fast fealty, 

Which I do owe unto all womankynd, 
Feel my heart perst with so great agony, 
When such I see that all for pitty I could dy." 

— The Faery Queene. 



(( 



a 



But ye, faire dames ! the worlds deare ornaments 

And lively images of heavens light, 
Let not your beames with such disparagements 

Be dimd and your bright glorie darkned quight ; 

But, mindfull still of your first countries sight, 
Doe still preserve your first informed grace, 
Whose shadow yet shynes in your beauteous face. 

Loath that foule blot, that hellish fierbrand, 
Disloiall lust, faire Beauties foulest blame, 

That base affections, which your eares would bland, 
Commend to you by loves abused name, 
But is indeede the bondslave of defame ; 

Which will the garland of your glorie marre, 

And quench the light of your bright shyning star." 

— An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. 



SPENSER 73 

7. Diffuseness — Obscurity.-^" As a narrative, the 
1 Faery Queene ' has, I think, every fault of which that kind of 
writing is capable. . . . He habitually dilates rather 
than compresses. . . . The characters are vague, and, 
even were they not, they drop out of the story so often and re- 
main out of it so long that we have forgotten who they are 
when we meet them again ; the episodes hinder the advance 
of the action instead of relieving it with variety of incident or 
novelty of situation; the plot recalls drearily our ancient 
enemy, the metrical romance.. . . . The generous indefi- 
niteness, which treats an hour more or less as of no account, is in 
keeping with that sense of endless leisure which it is one chief 
merit of the poem to suggest. But Spenser's dilation extends to 
thoughts as well as to phrases and images. He does not love 
the concise. Yet his dilation is not a mere distention, but 
the expansion of natural growth in the rich soil of his own 
mind, wherein the merest stick of a verse puts forth leaves and 
blossoms. ' ' — Lowell. 

" Much of the covert sense is easily detected ; but to explain 
all would require a commentator who could not only think 
from Spenser's mind, but recall from oblivion all the gossip of 
Elizabeth's court. . . . The cumbrousness and confusion 
and diffusion which the critics have recognized in the poem 
are to be referred to the fact that the processes of the under- 
standing, coldly contemplating the general plan, are in hope- 
less antagonism to the processes of the imagination, rapturously 
beholding and bodying forth the separate facts. The moment 
the poet abandons himself to his genius he forgets, and makes 
us forget, the purpose he had in view at the start; and he and 
we are only recalled from the delicious dream that he may 
moralize and that we may yawn. . . . He has auroral 
lights in profusion but no lightning." — E. P. Whipple. 

" The ' Faery Queene ' is an heroic poem in which the hero- 
ine, who gives her name to it, never appears: a story, of which 
the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclos- 



74 SPENSER 

lire in the last book, which was never written. The passion 
of the age was for ingenious riddling in morality as in love. 
. . . Exaggeration, profuseness, prolixity, were the literary 
diseases of the age ; an age of great excitement and hope, 
which had suddenly discovered its wealth and its powers, but 
not the rules of true economy in using them. . . . There 
was in Spenser an incontinence of the descriptive faculty. 

There is continually haunting us, amid incontestable 
richness, vigor, and beauty, a sense that the work is over- 
done. . . . There is no want in him, either, of that 
power of epigrammatic terseness which, in spite of its dirTuse- 
ness, his age valued and cultivated. But when he gets on 
a story or scene, he never knows when to stop. His duels go 
on, stanza after stanza, till there is no sound part left in either 
champion. . . . He drowns us in words. . . . But 
say what we will, and a great deal may be said, of his lavish 
profusion, his heady and uncontrolled excess, in the richness 
of picture and allegory in which he indulges — still, there it 
lies before us, like the most gorgeous of summer gardens. 

The ' Faery Queene,' as a whole, bears on its face a 
great fault of construction. It carries with it no adequate ac- 
count of its own story ; it does not explain itself or contain in 
its own structure what would enable a reader to understand 
how it arose. It has to be accounted for by a prose explana- 
tion and key outside of itself. . . . The truth is that the 
power of ordering and connecting a long and complicated plan 
was not one of Spenser's gifts. In the first two books, the al- 
legorical story proceeds from point to point with fair coher- 
ence and consecutiveness. After them the attempt to hold 
the scheme together, except in the loosest and most general 
way, is given up as too troublesome or too confined. The 
poet . . . ranges unrestrained over the whole field of 
knowledge and imagination. . . . His poem became an 
elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever interested 
him and tempted him to composition. ... So multi- 



SPENSER 75 

farious is the poem, so full of all that he thought or observed 
or felt that it is really a collection of separate tales and alle- 
gories, as much as the Arabian Nights. ... As a whole 
it is confusing, but we need not treat it as a whole. 
We can hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose. 
It is a wilderness in which we are left to wander. 
But there may be interest and pleasure in a wilderness, if we 
are prepared for the wandering. ... A vein of what are 
manifestly contemporary allusions breaks across the moral 
drift of the allegory, with an apparently distinct yet obscured 
meaning, and one of which it is the work of dissertations to 
find the key. ... In Spenser's allegories we are not 
seldom at a loss to make out what and how much was really 
intended, amid a maze of overstrained analogies and over- 
subtle conceits and attempts to hinder a too close and danger- 
ous identification. . . . There is an intentional dislocation 
of the parts of the story, when they might make it imprudently 
close in its reflection of facts or resemblance in portraiture. 

. . His palaces, landscapes, pageants, feasts, are taken 
to pieces in all their parts, and all these parts are likened to 
some other things. The impression remains that he wants a 
due perception of the absurd, the unnatural, the unneces- 
sary."—^?. W. Church. 

" Like Homer, Spenser is redundant, ingenuous, even 
childish. He says everything, he puts down reflections which 
we have made beforehand ; he repeats without limit his grand 
ornamental epithets. . . . We can see that he beholds 
objects in a beautiful uniform light, with infinite detail, never 
fearing to see his happy dream change or disappear. 
His thought expands in vast repeated comparisons, like those 
of the old Ionic poet. . . . He develops all the ideas 
which he handles. All his phrases become periods. Instead 
of compressing, he expands." — Taine. 

" One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades 
the whole of the ' Faery Queene. ' We become sick of cardinal 



y6 SPENSER 

virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men 
and women." — Macaulay. 

11 Dryden and many others have complained of intricacy 
and incoherence in the ' Faery Queene.' The admirers of the 
poet should not meet this complaint with a denial of the fact ; 
for a fact it is that Spenser does often violate the plain laws of 
space and time. To maintain coherence prolonged actions 
must sometimes be supposed to happen in no time ; and per- 
sonages are sometimes present or absent as it suits the poet's 
convenience, coming and going without remark. The proper 
excuse is to say the scene is laid ' in the delightful land of 
Faery,' where perplexity and confusion are as natural as in a 
dream. The real explanation probably is, that the poet wrote 
with great facility, and that in ' winging his flight rapidly 
through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds,' he some- 
times sang himself to sleep, and forgot exactly where he was. 
'In description,' Campbell says, 'Spenser exhibits 
nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which char- 
acterize the very greatest poets. ' It would perhaps be more 
accurate to say that the brief strokes are supplemented and 
their abrupt, concentrated effect weakened, or at least soft- 
ened, by subsequent diffusion. . . . The poet does not 
leave his conceptions pent up and struggling with repressed 
force, but expands them into sublime images." — William 
Minto. 

"But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, 
Can charm an understanding age no more ; 
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, 
While the dull moral lies too plain below." 

— Addison. 

"This poet contains great beauties, a sweet and harmonious 
versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination. Yet does the 
perusal of his work become so tedious that one never finishes 
it from the mere pleasure that it affords. It soon becomes a 
kind of task-reading, and it requires some effort and resolution 



spenser yy 

to carry us on to the end of his long performance. Spenser 
keeps his place upon our shelves, among the classics, but is 
seldom seen on the table, and there is scarcely an one, if he 
dare to be ingenuous, but will confess that, notwithstanding all 
the merit of the poet, he affords an entertainment with which 
the palate is soon satiated." — Hume. 

" Superfluousness, though eschewed with a fine instinct by 
Chaucer in some of his latest works, where the narrative was 
fullest of action and character, abounded in his others ; and, 
in spite of the classics, it had not been recognized as a fault in 
Spenser's time, when books were still rare and a writer thought 
himself bound to pour out all he felt and knew. It accorded 
also with his genius, and in him it is not an excess of weakness 
but of will and luxury." — Leigh Hunt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Like as the tide, that comes fro' the ocean mayne, 
Flowes up the Shenan with contrarie forse, 
And, over-ruling him in his owne rayne, 
Drives backe the current of his kindly course, 
And makes it seeme to have some other sourse ; 
But when the floud is spent, then backe againe 
His borrowed waters forst to redisbourse, 
He sends the sea his owne with double gaine, 
And tribute eke withall as to his soveraine, 
Thus did the battell varie to and fro." 

— The Faery Queene. 

"Whom when the Prince to batteil new addrest 
And threatning high his dreadfull stroke did see, 
His sparkling blade about his head he blest, 
And smote off quite his right leg by the knee, 
That down he tombled ; as an aged tree, 
High growing on the top of rocky clift, 
Whose hartstrings with keene steel nigh hewen be ; 
The mightie trunck, halfe rent with ragged rift, 
Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drift. 



78 SPENSER 

Or as a Castle reared high and round, 

By subtile engins and malitious slight 

Is undermined from the lowest ground, 

And her foundation forst, and feebled quight, 

At last downe falles : and with her heaped hight 

Her hastie ruin does more heavie make, 

And yields it selfe unto the victours might. 

Such was the Gyaunts fall, that seemed to shake 

The stedfast globe of earth, as it for feare did quake." 

— The Faery Queene. 

" But if I her like ought on earth might read, 
I would her lyken to a crowne of lillies, 
Upon a virgin brydes adorned head, 
With roses dight and goolds and dafTadillies ; 
Or like the circlet of a turtle true, 
In which all colours of the rainbow bee ; 
Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new, 
In which all pure perfection one may see. 
But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone 
Of earthly things, to judge of things divine ; 
Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none 
Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define." 

— Colin Clout's Come Home Again. 

8. Verbal License. — Spenser has been generally criti- 
cised for the liberties that he takes with language. Craik de- 
clares that his treatment of words on the occasion of difficulty 
with his verse is " like nothing that was ever seen unless it might 
be Hercules breaking the back of the Nemean lion. He gives 
them any sense and any shape that the case may demand. 
Sometimes he merely alters a letter or two ; sometimes he twists 
off the head or tail of the unfortunate vocable altogether." 
Ben Jonson declared that, in " affecting the ancients," Spenser 
" writ no language," and Daniel, writing soon after his mas- 
ter, criticises him for singing "in aged accents and untimely 
words." 

"He professes to make language and style suitable to the 



SPENSER 79 

1 ragged and rustical ' rudeness of the shepherds whom he brings 
on the scene, by making it both archaic and provincial. He 
found in Chaucer a store of forms and words sufficiently well 
known to be, with a little help, intelligible and sufficiently 
out of common use to give the character of antiquity to a 
poetry which employed them. And from his sojourn in the 
North he is said to have imported a certain number of local 
peculiarities which would seem unfamiliar and harsh in the 
South. . . . The liberty of reviving old forms, of vent- 
uring on new and bold phrases, was rightly greater in his 
time than at a later stage of the language. Many of his words, 
either invented or preserved, are happy additions ; some, 
which have not taken root in the language, we may regret. 
But it was a liberty which he abused. He was extravagant 
and unrestrained in his experiments on language. 
On his own authority he cuts down, or he alters a word, or 
he adopts a mere corrupt pronunciation to suit a place in his 
metre or because he wants a rime. . . . Precedents 
may no doubt be found for each one of these sacri- 
fices to the necessities of metre or rime in some one or other 
living dialectic usage or even in printed books. 
But when they are profusely used, as they are in Spenser, they 
argue either want of trouble or want of resource. In his im- 
patience he is reckless in making a word he wants ; he is 
reckless in making one word do the duty of another, inter- 
changing actives and passives, transferring epithets from their 
proper subjects. . . . His own generation felt his license 
to be extreme, . . . and to us, though students of the 
language must always find interest in the storehouse of ancient 
or invented language to be found in Spenser, this mixture of 
what is obsolete or capriciously new is a bar, and not an un- 
reasonable one, to a frank welcome at first acquaintance." 
— R. W. Church. 

"Avoiding the affectation of refinement [in the ' Shep- 
heard's Calendar '] he falls into the opposite affectation of rustic- 



80 SPENSER 

ity ; and, by a profusion of obsolete and uncouth expressions, 
hinders the free movement of his fancy." — E. P. Whipple. 

" He loved 'seldseen, costly' words perhaps too well, and 
did not always distinguish between mere strangeness and that 
novelty which is so agreeable as to cheat us with some charm 
of seeming association. He chooses his language for its rich 
canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. 
He forms English words out of French or Italian ones, some- 
times, I think, on a misapprehension of their true meaning ; 
nay, he sometimes makes new ones by unlawfully grafting a 
scion of Romance on a Teutonic root. . . . His archa- 
isms often needed a glossary even in his own day, but he 
never endangers his finest passages by any experiments of this 
kind. . . . Spenser was an epicure in language. 
His innovations were by no means always happy, as not alvvays 
according with the genius of the language, and they have 
therefore not prevailed. . . . His theory ... of 
rescuing good archaisms from unwarranted oblivion was ex- 
cellent, not so his practice of being archaic for the mere sake 
of escaping from the common and familiar. ... It may 
readily be granted that he sometimes 'hunted the letter,' as 
it was called, out of all cry." — Lowell. 

"A great deal has been written on this — comments, at 
least, of the unfavorable kind, generally resolving themselves 
into the undoubtedly true remarks that Spenser's dialect is 
not the dialect of any actual place or time, that it is an arti- 
ficial ' poetic diction ' made up of Chaucer and of Northern 
dialect, of classicisms and of foreign words and miscellaneous 
archaisms from no matter where. No doubt it is. But 
there was no actually spoken or ordinarily written 
tongue in Spenser's day which could claim to be ' Queen's 
English.' ... In its remoteness without grotesqueness, 
in its lavish color, in its abundance of matter for every kind 
of cadence and sound-effect, it is exactly suited to the sub- 
ject, the writer, and the verse." — George Saintsbury. 



SPENSER 8 1 

" He was probably seduced into a certain license of ex- 
pression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his com- 
plicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his na- 
tive language. . . . Spenser is the poet of our waking 
dreams ; and he has invented a language of his own for 
them . " — William Hazlitt. 

" Intentionally archaic in his diction, he heightened the 
stature of English as a poetic language, and raised it to a 
pitch of exaltation which had not previously been approached, 
and has hardly since been rivalled by the few noblest among 
his successors." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" He is enamoured of it [the poetic land] even to its very 
language; he revives the old words, the expressions of the Mid- 
dle Ages, the style of Chaucer." — Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

HOBBINOL. — " Diggon Davie ! I bidde her god day ; 
Or Diggon her is, or I missaye." 

DlGGON. — " Her was her, while it was daye-light, 

But now her is a most wretched wight ; 

For day that was, is wightly * past, 

And now at earst the dirke night doth hast." 

HOBBINOL. — " Diggon, areede, who has thee so dight? 
Never I wist thee in so poore a plight. 
Where is the fayre flock thou was wont to leade ? 
Or bene they chaffred,t or a mischiefe dead ? " 



DlGGON. — " Hobbin, ah Hobbin ! I curse the stounde 
That ever I cast to have lorne this grounde 
Wel-away the while I was so fonde J 
To leave the good that I had in hande, 
In hope of better that was uncouth ! 
So lost the Dogge the flesh in his mouth. 

* Quickly. t Sold. t Foolish. 



82 SPENSER 

My seely sheepe (ah, seely sheepe !) 
That here by there I whilome used to keepe, 
All were they lustye, as thou didst see, 
Bene all sterved with pyne and penuree ; 
Hardly my selfe escaped thilke payne, 
Driven for neede to come home agayne." 

— The Shepheards Calendar 



a 



The soveraine vveede betwixt two marbles playne, 
She pounded small, and did in pieces bruise ; 

And then atween her lily handes twain 

Into his wound the juice thereof did scruze. . . . 

And after having searched the intuse deep, 

She with her scarf did bind the wound, from cold to keepe." 

— The Faery Queene. 

" Ensample of his wondrous faculty, 

Behold the boyling bathes in Cairbadon, 
Which seeth with secret fire eternally, 

And in their entrailles, full of quick brimston, 
Nourish the flames which they are warmed upon." 

— The Faery Queene. 

9. Flattery— Adulation. — "His disposition was soft 
and yielding; and, to honor a friend or propitiate a patron, 
he did not hesitate to make his verse a vehicle of flattery as 
well as of truth. . . . The flattery of Queen Elizabeth is 
so gross that the wonder is she did not behead him for irony 
instead of pensioning him for panegyric. The Queen's hair 
was red ; and Spenser, like the other poets of his day, is too 
loyal to permit the ideal head of beauty to wear any locks 
but those which are golden." — E. P. Whipple. 

" He had already too well caught the trick of flattery — 
flattery in a degree almost inconceivable to us — which the 
fashions of the time and the queen's strange self-deceit exacted 
from the loyalty and enthusiasm of Englishmen. 
Under this head comes a feature which the ' charity of his- 
tory ' may lead us to treat as simple exaggeration, but which 



SPENSER S$ 

often suggests something less pardonable, in the great char- 
acters, political or literary, of Elizabeth's reign. This was 
the gross, shameless, lying flattery paid to the Queen. 
It was no worship of a secluded and distant object of loyalty ; 
the men who thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by 
painful experience, what Elizabeth was ; able, indeed, high- 
spirited, successful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, 
vain, ill-tempered, unjust, and in her old age ugly. And 
yet the Gloriana of the 'Faery Queene,' the empress of all 
nobleness — Belphoebe, the Princess of all sweetness and beauty, 
Britomart, the armed votaress of all purity, Mercilla, the lady 
of all compassion and grace, were but the reflections of the 
language in which it was then agreed upon by some of the 
greatest of Englishmen to speak, and to be supposed to think, 
of the Queen. "-R. W. Church. 

" Thus [by the stipend bestowed on him by the Queen] he 
procured the leisure to exercise his pen — ' the vacant head 
which verse demands ' — but he incurred at the same time the 
obligations of a court poet, which, though they may have sat 
lightly on the shoulders of a loyal subject and an humble 
off-shoot of the aristocracy, by nature prone to admiration, 
led him sometimes into servile compliances and into a habit 
of adulation. . . . And, speaking more generally, we 
do not love to see our ' sage, serious Spenser ' turn his great 
moral song into a venal eulogy of the great, committing, as it 
were, the ineffectual simony of selling riches in the Temple of 
Fame. But . . . flattery was a custom and almost a 
necessity among poets." — Professor Child. 

" The age of Elizabeth was, indeed, \ an age of adulation' 
— and Edmund Spenser Adulator-general to the Court. But 
blame him not too severely, we implore you, for following 
the ' custom of the time.' " — Professor Wilson [Christopher 
North]. 



84 SPENSER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And thou, O fayrest Princesse under sky ! 

In this fayre mirrhour maist behold thy face, 

And thine own realmes in lond of Faery, 

And in this antique ymage thy great auncestry. 

The which, O ! pardon me thus to enfold 
In cover vele, and wrap in shadowes light, 

That feeble eyes your glory may behold, 

Which ells could not endure those beames bright, 
But would bee dazled with exceeding light." 

— The Faery Queene. 

** The soverayne beauty which I doo admyre, 

Witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed ! 
The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fyre 

In my fraile spirit, by her from basenesse raysed ; 

That, being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, 
Base thing I can no more endure to view : 

But, looking still on her I stand amazed 
At wondrous sight of so celestiall hew. 

So, when my toung would speak her praises dew, 
It stopped is with thoughts astonishment ; 

And, when my pen would write her titles true, 
It ravisht is with fancies wonderment ; 

Yet in my hart I then both speake and write 

The wonder that my wit cannot endite." 

— Amoretti, or Sonnets. 

" In the highest place, 
Urania [Countess of Pembroke], sister unto Astrofell, 

In whose brave mynd, as in a golden cofer, 

All heavenly gifts and riches locked are ; 

More rich than pearles of Ynd, or gold of Opher, 

And in her sex more wonderfull and rare. 
Ne lesse praise worthie I Theana [Countess of Warwick] read, 

Whose goodly beames though they be overr-dight 
With mourning stole of carefull wydowhead, 

Yet through that darksome vale do glister bright ; 



SPENSER 85 

She is the well of bountie and brave mynd, 
Excelling most in glorie and great light : 

She is the ornament of womankind, 

And courts chief garlond with all vertues dight." 

— Colin Clout's Come Home Againe. 

10. Pictorial Power. — "Nothing else [than the Spen- 
serian stanza] could adapt itself so perfectly to the endless 
series of vignettes and dissolving views which the poet delights 
in giving. . . . The endless, various, brightly-colored, 
softly and yet distinctly outlined pictures rise and pass before 
the eyes and vanish without a break, without a jar, softer than 
sleep and as continuous, gayer than the rainbow and as un- 
discoverably connected with any obvious cause." — George 
Sai?itsbnry. 

"It was this wondrous and various troop of ideal shapes, 
palpable to his own eye and domesticated in his own heart, 
that he sent forth, in an endless succession of pictures, through 
the magical pages of the ' Faery Queene.' " — E. P. Whipple. 

"He so bordered it [the 'Faery Queene'] with bright- 
colored fancies, he so often filled whole pages and crowded 
the text hard in others with the gay frolics of his pencil, 
that, as in the Grimani missal, the holy function of the book 
is forgotten in the ecstasy of its adornment. . . . The 
true use of him is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the 
mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, 
long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long as to 
clog them." — Lowell. 

" We shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of 
visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush 
•in the colors of language than in this Rubens of English 
poetry . ' ' — T/iomas Campbell. 

"Is it possible to refuse credence to a man who paints 
things for us with such accurate details and in such lovely 
colors? Here with a dash of his pen he describes a forest for 
you; and are you not instantly in it with him? Beech trees 



86 SPENSER 

with their silvery stems ; ' loftie trees iclad with sommer's 
pride, did spred so broad that heaven's light did hide;' rays 
of light tremble on the bark and shine on the ground, on 
the reddening ferns and low bushes, which, suddenly smitten 
with the luminous track, glisten and glimmer. Footsteps are 
scarcely heard on the thick beds of heaped leaves; and at dis- 
tant intervals, on the tall herbage, drops of dew are sparkling. 
At every bend in the alley, at every change of light, 
a stanza, a word reveals a landscape or an apparition. It is 
morning, the white dawn gleams faintly through the trees ; 
bluish vapors veil the horizon, and vanish in the smiling air ; 
the springs tremble and murmur faintly amongst the mosses, 
and on high the poplar leaves begin to stir and nutter like 
the wings of butterflies. ... In every book we see 
strange processions pass by, allegorical and picturesque shows, 
like those which were then displayed at the courts of princes ; 
now a masquerade of Cupid, now of the Rivers, now of the 
Months, now of the Vices. . . . Here are finished pict- 
ures, true and complete, composed with a painter's feeling, 
with choice of tints and outlines ; our eyes are delighted by 
them. . . . The poet, here and throughout, is a colorist 
and an architect." — Taine. 

"I think that if Spenser had not been a great poet he 
would have been a great painter, and in that case there is 
ground for believing that England would have possessed — 
and in the person of one man — her Claude, her Annibal 
Caracci, her Correggio, her Titian, her Rembrandt, perhaps 
even her Raphael. I suspect that if Spenser's history were 
better known we should find that he was a passionate student 
of pictures, a haunter of the collections of his friends, Essex 
and Leicester. . . . Spenser emulated the Raphaels and 
Titians in a profusion of pictures, many of which are here 
taken from their walls. They give the poet's poet a claim to 
a new title — that of Poet of the Painters." — Leigh Hunt. 

"In reading his descriptions, one can hardly avoid being 



SPENSER %7 

reminded of Rubens' allegorical pictures. . . . Nobody 
but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser ; and he 
could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that 
hovers over it." — William Hazlitt. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A little lowly hermitage it was, 

Downe in a dale, hard by a forests side, 
Far from resort of people that did pas 

In traveill to and froe ; a little wyde 

There was an holy chappell edifyde, 
Wherein the hermite dewly wont to say 

His holy thinges each morne and eventyde 
Thereby a christall streame did gently play, 
Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway." 

— The Faery Queene. 

" Soone after this I saw on th' other side, 

A curious Coffer made of Heben wood, 
That in it did most precious treasure hide, 

Exceeding all this baser worldes good : 
Yet through the overflowing of the flood 

It almost drowned was, and done to nought, 

That sight thereof much griev'd my pensive thought. 

At length, when most in perill it was brought, 
Two Angels, downe descending with swift flight, 

Out of the swelling streame it lightly caught, 
And twixt their blessed armes it carried quight 
Above the reach of anie living sight : 

So now it is transform'd into that starre, 

In which all heavenly treasures locked are." 

— The Ruiues of Time, 

*' Here also playing on the grassy greene, 

Woodgods and Satyres and swift Dryades, 
With many fairies oft were dauncing seene. 
Not so much did Dan Orpheus represser 



88 SPENSER 

The streames of Hebrus with his songs, I weene, 

As that faire troupe of woodie goddesses 
Staied thee, (O Peneus ! ) powring foorth to thee, 
From cheereful lookes great mirth and gladsome glee. 

The verie nature of the place, resounding 
With gentle murmure of the breathing ayre, 

A pleasant bowre with all delight abounding 
In the fresh shadowe did for them prepayre, 

To rest their limbs with wearines redounding. 

For first the high palme trees with braunches faire 

Out of the lowly vallies did arise, 

And shoote up their heads into the skyes." 

— Virgils Gnat. 



MILTON, 1608-1674. 

Biographical Outline. — John Milton, born December 
9, 1608, in Bread Street, Cheapside, London ; father a scriv- 
ener — a man of scholarly and musical attainments ; Milton is 
first taught by a private tutor, one Thomas Young ; he enters 
St. Paul's School not later than 1620 ; is passionately devoted 
to study, reading till midnight regularly, while yet a child, 
and thus early injuring his eyesight; he learns Latin, Greek, 
French, Italian, and some Hebrew ; is a poet at ten, and is de- 
voted to Spenser's " Faery Queene; " he writes two paraphrases 
of the Psalms before he is fifteen ; enters Christ's College, 
Cambridge, February 12, 1624-25, as a pensioner, and is 
matriculated on the 9th of the following April ; he keeps every 
term at Cambridge, taking the degree of A.B. in March, 1629, 
and A.M. in July, 1632 ; he is harshly treated (tradition says 
whipped) by his tutor, one Chappel ; is highly respected at 
the university for his scholarship; corresponds in Latin with 
his friends Diodati, Young, and Gill, while at Cambridge ; 
writes several Latin poems and " Prolusiones Oratories " (pub- 
lished in 1674) as college exercises; writes his ode " On the 
Morning of Christ's Nativity" at Christmas, 1629, and his 
sonnet to Shakespeare in 1630 ; expresses scorn for the dra- 
matic performances seen at Cambridge, the narrow theological 
studies of his fellows, and their ignorance of philosophy ; is 
nicknamed " the lady " at college because of his long, flowing 
locks, his personal beauty, and his sensitiveness ; becomes a 
good fencer, but holds himself austerely aloof from most 
student society ; develops great hostility to scholasticism. 

Even while at Cambridge Milton already considered himself 
as dedicated to the utterance of great thoughts and to the 

89 



90 MILTON 

strictest chastity, on the ground that "he who would write 
well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true 
poem;" Milton is educated with a view to taking holy 
orders, but, on leaving Cambridge, he decides to postpone 
(but not to abandon) that course ; he is alienated from the 
Church by the intolerant policy of Laud ; he soon decides to ' 
devote himself exclusively to literature, and settles with his 
father at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, twelve miles from 
London, where he resides from 1632 to 1638 ; while at Hor- 
ton, Milton visits London frequently, to obtain instruction in 
music and mathematics, and writes his " V Allegro" and 
• ' 77 Petiseroso ; " he writes also his masque ' ' Arcades, ' ' for the 
Countess-dowager of Derby, and "Comus" for the Earl of 
Bridgewater (performed at Ludlow Castle in September, 1634, 
and published by Milton's musical collaborator, Henry Lawes, 
without acknowledging Milton's authorship) ; Milton writes 
" Lycidas " in November, 1637, on the death of his friend 
Edward King. 

He starts in April, 1638, on a Continental tour, taking a 
servant and being liberally supplied with money by his father; 
he makes brief visits to Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, 
and spends two months in Florence and two more in Rome ; 
thence to Naples, where he learns of the threatened revolution, 
and determines to return home, "lest I should be travelling 
abroad while my countrymen were fighting for liberty ; " he 
stops two more months at Florence on his way homeward, and 
returns by way of Ferrara, Bologna, Venice, Verona, Milan, 
and (probably) the Simplon ; he spends some time in Geneva, 
and reaches England via Paris in July, 1639; while abroad 
he offends the Italians by his strict morality and his outspoken 
attacks on popery, but is received and honored by many emi- 
nent persons, including Grotius, the Academicians of Florence, 
Galileo, and others ; during his tour he writes five Italian 
sonnets and a canzone; on his return he takes lodgings in a 
tailor's house in St. Bride's Churchyard, London, and receives. 



MILTON 91 

there his sister's two sons (aged eight and nine) as pupils ; 
soon afterward he takes " a pretty garden-house" in Alders- 
gate Street ; he establishes for himself and his pupils a regime 
of "hard study and spare diet," allowing himself but one 
" gaudy day " a month, and carrying out, with his pupils, the 
methods of education described in his tractate on that subject; 
in 1643 he takes more pupils, and writes his Latin idyll " Epi- 
taphium Damonis ; " he sketches the plan of a poem on Arthur, 
draws up a list of ninety-nine subjects for other poems, and 
already contemplates a poem on " Paradise Lost ; " he enters 
political discussion by publishing, anonymously, in the sum- 
mer of 1 64 1, three pamphlets — " Of Reformation Touching 
Church Discipline in England," " Prelatical Episcopacy," 
and "Animadversions upon the Remonstrance Defence," all 
three being vehement attacks on the episcopacy and scathing 
replies to the pleas of its adherents. 

In February, 1641-42, Milton publishes under his own 
name "The Reason of Church Government Urged Against 
Prelacy; " in April, 1642, he publishes his "Apology," de- 
fending himself against a slanderous attack by Bishop Hall and 
replying most vehemently in kind ; he declines to enter the 
army at the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, on the ground 
that his mind is stronger than his body, and is therefore more 
useful to the cause of liberty; on May 21, 1643, after a sur- 
prisingly short courtship, Milton marries Mary Powell, aged 
seventeen, daughter of a Cavalier landholder, residing at 
Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, who had long owed Milton a debt of 
^312 ; soon afterward, Milton's father, driven by the Royal- 
ists from his home at Reading, comes to live with Milton ; 
Milton's wife soon becomes dissatisfied with the dulness of his 
home and the crying of his oft-beaten pupils, and Milton 
finds his wife stupid ; so she returns to her father after a 
month's trial of "a philosophical life," promising to return 
at the ensuing Michaelmas ; she refuses to return ; Milton's 
messenger is uncivilly treated by her family, and then (within 



92 MILTON 

three months of his marriage) Milton writes his tractate on 
"The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," in which he 
justifies divorce on the ground of incompatibility or of mutual 
consent, especially if there be no children, and proposes 
sweeping changes in the marriagelaws ; the tractate makes 
him notorious, and he is bitterly attacked, especially after his 
second and acknowledged edition of the tractate in February, 
1643-44 ; he publishes a second pamphlet on divorce in July, 
1644 ; influenced by the demand that his books be burned 
and by the threat of prosecution because he had not obtained 
a proper license from the Stationers' Company, Milton writes 
his " Areopagitica" published November 24, 1644, and gen- 
erally acknowledged to be the best of his prose works; he pub- 
lishes two more pamphlets on divorce in 1644-45, an d pro- 
poses to apply his principles by marrying the daughter of one 
Dr. Davis, a lady immortalized in Milton's sonnet to "Lady 
Margaret ; " meantime his wife's parents lose their property, 
and she begs his pardon and asks to be received again ; Milton 
reluctantly consents, and they take a house in the Barbican 
(a street near Aldersgate Street) large enough to accommodate 
his increasing number of pupils ; by Mary Powell, Milton has 
four children: Anne, Mary, John (who died in infancy), and 
Deborah; Mrs. Milton died in 1652. 

Milton publishes the first collected edition of his poems in 
1645, placing the Latin and the English verses on separate 
pages; his pupils increase in number, and include several sons 
of prominent families; in the autumn of 1647 Milton removes 
to a house in High Holborn and gives up teaching ; it is sup- 
posed that he inherited a competency from his father, who 
died in March, 1646-47 ; in his sonnet to Fairfax and in 
other writings he expresses deep sympathy with the Puritan 
cause ; he writes paraphrases of seventeen of the Psalms and a 
"History of Britain;" immediately after the execution of 
Charles I., he publishes a pamphlet on " The Tenure of Kings 
and Magistrates," and is consequently invited to become Latin 



MILTON 93 

Secretary to the Council of State ; he accepts, and takes office 
March 15, 1648-49, at a salary of about ^730 a year; his 
duties are to translate the foreign despatches of the govern- 
ment into dignified Latin, to examine papers found on sus- 
pected persons, and to act as a licenser of books; he is directed 
by the government to answer the " Eikon Basilike" a book 
then popularly supposed to have been written by Charles I., in 
defence of his character and position, but really written by the 
Bishop of Exeter ; Milton publishes his answer October 6, 
1649, under the title " Eikonoklastes" of which a French 
translation is ordered made by the Council of State ; Milton 
is ordered by the Council, in January, 1650, to reply to Sal- 
masius, a professor at Leyden — " a man of enormous reading 
and no judgment" — whom the Scottish Presbyterians had 
invited to write in defence of their theological and politi- 
cal position, and who had accordingly published, in 1649, the 
" Defensio Regio pro Carolo /.;" Milton's reply, "Pro Populo 
Anglicano Defensio " appears in March, 1650, and he refuses 
^100 voted him by the Council as payment for the work; 
he completes the destruction of his eyesight by overwork on his 
" Defence ; " in March, 1652, he is attacked with gross per- 
sonal abuse by one Peter du Moulin in a book entitled "Regit 
Sanguinis Clamor ad Ccelum," dedicated to Alexander More, 
formerly professor of Greek at Geneva, and attributed to More 
by Milton ; he is ordered by the Council to reply to the 
" Clamor," and publishes his answer in May, 1654, under the 
title "Defensio Secunda," a book full of savage abuse, but 
containing, also, valuable autobiographical passages and an 
apostrophe to Cromwell ; More replies, denying the author- 
ship of the " Clamor,'" and Milton writes a third book, " Pro 
Se Defensio," in August, 1655. 

While Latin secretary he occupies for a time chambers at 
Whitehall; later he removes to another " pretty garden-house," 
afterward 19 York Street, subsequently occupied successively 
by Bentham, James Mill, and Hazlitt, and demolished in 



94 MILTON 

1877 ; he lives here till the Restoration ; he is assisted in his 
duties as secretary by Andrew Marvell and others; in 1655, 
apparently because of his blindness, Milton's salary is reduced 
to ^150 a year, which was to be paid during his life, and was 
soon increased to ^200; on November 12, 1656, he marries 
Catherine Woodcock, by whom he has one child, but mother 
and child die in February, 1658 ; Milton is said to have had an 
allowance first from Parliament and afterward from Cromwell 
for the maintenance of a "weekly table" for the entertain- 
ment of eminent foreigners who came to England especially 
to see him; in 1659 he publishes two pamphlets favoring 
a purely voluntary ecclesiastical system, and in 1660 one 
proposing that Parliament make itself perpetual; in April, 
1660, he writes " Brief Notes," attacking a royalist sermon; 
at the Restoration Milton conceals himself in a friend's house 
in Bartholomew Close; on June 16, 1660, it is ordered by 
the Commons that his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio" be 
burned by the common hangman and that he be indicted and 
taken into custody ; he is arrested during the summer, but is 
ordered released at the next session on the payment of fees 
amounting to ^150; the Indemnity Act frees him from all 
legal consequences of his actions ; the lenient treatment of 
Milton was probably due to the efforts of his friends Marvell 
and D'Avenant, for the latter of whom he had formerly en- 
treated when D'Avenant was in danger of execution; on re- 
gaining his liberty, Milton takes a house in Holborn, and soon 
afterward removes to Jewett Street. 

By the changes attendant on the Restoration his income is 
reduced from ^500 to about ^200 a year ; Mrs. Powell, 
mother of Milton's first wife, attempts to obtain some of his 
property, and apparently succeeds in part; on February 24, 
1662-63, he marries Elizabeth Minshull, and soon afterward 
removes to a small house with a garden, in Artillery Walk, 
Bunhill Fields, where he resides till death, if we except a re- 
ported short sojourn as a lodger in the house of the bookseller 



MILTON g>5 

Millington ; during the plague of 1665 he retires to Chalfont 
St. Giles, where " a pretty box " was taken for him by the 
Quaker, Thomas Ell wood ; Ell wood had previously formed a 
friendship with Milton, had read Latin books to him, received 
from him in the " box " at Chalfont the manuscript of 
" Paradise Lost," and suggested a poem on "Paradise Re- 
gained ; " the house at Chalfont is still preserved (1898) as a 
public memorial of Milton; he begins "Paradise Lost" in 
1658 and finishes it in 1663 ; he loses his house in Bread Street 
(inherited from his father) in the great fire of 1666; on April 
27, 1667, Milton sells the copyright of " Paradise Lost " to 
Samuel Simmons, the terms being that Milton is to receive 
£$ down and ^5 additional for each of the first three editions 
of not more than 1,500 copies each; he receives his second 
^5 in April, 1669, and these ^10 are all he ever received 
personally for "Paradise Lost;" in 1680 Milton's widow 
sells to Simmons a perpetual copyright of the book for £8 ; 
4,500 copies were sold by 1688 ; Dryden first appreciated its 
value, saying of Milton : " This man cuts us all out, and the 
ancients, too ; " with Milton's permission, Dryden puts " Para- 
dise Lost " into a drama in rhyme, under the title "A Heroick 
Opera," published in 1674; Milton is much visited, in his 
later years, by foreigners and men of rank ; " Paradise Lost " 
is translated into German and into Latin in 1682; Milton 
publishes " Paradise Regained " and "Samson Agonistes " to- 
gether in 167 1. and could never bear to hear " Paradise Re- 
gained " pronounced inferior to his first epic; in 1669 he 
publishes his Latin grammar and his "History of Britain," 
written long before ; in 1673 he puts forth a new edition of his 
early poems ; he suffers during his last years from the gout and 
from unpleasant domestic relations ; he dies at his house in 
Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, November 8, 1674, leaving 
^100 each to his " undutiful children," and £600 to his 
widow. 



96 MILTON * 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON MILTON. 

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MILTON 97 

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65-79- 
Dobson, W. T., "The Classic Poets." London 1879, Smith, Elder & 
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7 



98 MILTON 

Seeley, J. R., " Lectures and Essays. " London, 1870, Macmillan, 89- 

154. 

Yonge, C. D., "Three Centuries of English Literature." New York, 
1889, Appleton, 185-210. 

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Russell, W. G, " The Book of Authors." London, n. d., 1867, Warne, 
64-67. 

Hutton, L., "Literary Landmarks of London." New York, 1892, 
Harper, 210-216. 

Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Authors." London, 
1847, Bentley, I : 67-104. 

Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
taker, 13-105. 

Sterling, John, " Essays and Tales." London, 1848, Parker, 1 : 73-87. 

Contemporary Review, 19: 198-209 (Dowden) ; 22: 427-460 (Bayne). 

Quarterly Review, 143 : 186-204 an d 32 : 442-457 and 63 : 29-61 (J. H. 
Lord). 

Edinburgh Reviezv, 69: 112-121 (Channing); 42 ; 304-346 (Macaulay); 
25 : 485-501 (Mackintosh). 

Christian Examiner, 3 : 29-77 (W- E. Channing). 

LittelVs Living Age, 44: 497-499 (Lamartine). 

British Quarterly, 29: 185-214(0. Masson). 

International Review, 9: 125-135 (H. C. Lodge). 

North British Review, 16 : 295-335 (D. Masson). 

Fortnightly Review, 54: 510-519 (Pollock); 16: 767-781 (J. A. Sy- 
monds). 

The Nation, 30 : 30-32 (G. B. Smith). 

Century Magazine, 36: 53-55 (M. Arnold) ; 14: 53-55 (M. Arnold). 

North American Review, 47: 56-73 (Emerson); 82: 388-404 (Whit- 
ney); 22: 3 6 4-373; 3 1 '- 101-103 and 338 and 451-452; 38: 
243-246; 41: 375-382 (W. E. Channing); 46: 216-217 (Emer- 
son) ; 126: 536-543(0. Masson); 114: 204 — (Lowell). 

Fortnightly Review, 54: 510-520 (Pollock) ; 22: 767 (J. A. Symonds). 

Bibliotheca Sacra, 4: 251-269 (T. W. Hunt). 

Presbyterian Review, 4: 681-709 (H. Van Dyke). 

Eraser's Magazine, 17: 627-635 (W. E. Channing). 

Contemporary Review, 19: 198-211 (E. Dowden); 22: 427-460 
(Bayne). 

Macmillan' 's Magazine, 31 : 554-556 (J. C. Shairp) and 380-387 (M. 
Pattison) ; 28 : 536-547 (G. B. Smith). 



MILTON 99 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Sublimity— Majesty. — " This is the quality which 
the poverty of our language tries to express by the words 
solemnity, gravity, majesty, nobility, loftiness, and which, 
name it as we may, we all feel in reading ' Paradise Lost.' 
His rage, when almost delirious, is always a Miltonic rage ; 
it is grand, sublime, terrible; mingled with thescurrillities of 
theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever 
written. . . . The elevation is communicated to us not 
by the dogma or deliverance but by the sympathy. We catch 
the contagion of the poet's mental attitude. Milton's mind 
was full to overflowing with vague conceptions of the lofty, the 
vast, and the sublime." — Mark Patti son. 

" The author seems to think but in images, and these 
images are grand and proud as his own soul. . . . There 
are moments when, shaking the dust of argument from off him, 
the poet suddenly bursts forth and carries us off on the tor- 
rent of an incomparable eloquence. It is poetic enthusiasm, 
a flood of images shed over the dull and arid theme, a wing- 
stroke which sweeps us high above piddling controversy. 
The poetry of Milton is the very essence of poetry. 
There is something indescribably heroical and magnificent 
which overflows from Milton, even when he is engaged in the 
most miserable discussions. . . . The eloquence is now 
sad, tender, and again wild and tempestuous as the hurricane 
of heaven." — Ed?7io?id Scherer. 

" From one end of ' Paradise Lost ' to the other, Milton is, 
in his diction and rhythm, constantly a great artist in the 
great style. ... In our race are thousands of readers, 
presently there will be millions, who know not a word of 
Greek or Latin, and will never learn those languages. If this 
host of readers are ever to gain any sense of the power and 
charm of the great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is 

LofC. 



IOO MILTON 

not through the translation of the ancients but through the 
original poetry of Milton, who has the like power and charm 
because he has the like grand style." — Matthew Arnold. 

" The style is always great. On the whole it is the greatest 
in the whole range of English poetry, -so great that when once 
we have come to honor and love it, it so subdues the judgment 
that judgment can with difficulty do its work with temperance. 
It lifts the low, gives life to the commonplace, dig- 
nifies even the vulgar, and makes us endure that which is 
heavy and dull. We catch ourselves admiring things not alto- 
gether worthy of admiration because the robe they wear is so 
royal. Splendid is the poetry of ' Comus.' Even when the 
imagination in ' Comus ' falls it is made more remarkable by 
the soaring strength of his loftier flight and by the majesty of 
the verse. . . . His style is so spacious and so majestic. 
There is majesty in the conduct of thought and a 
music in the majesty which fills it with solemn beauty ; . . . 
and this fulfills the ultimate need of a grand style in being the 
easy and necessary expression of the very character and na- 
ture of the man. . . . The majesty and the beauty of 
' Paradise Lost ' are beyond praise. . . . Throughout, 
the grandeur of the picture increases with the grandeur of 
the thought. . . . Nothing can be nobler in thought 
and verse than Adam's great hymn of praise." — Stopford 
Bi'ooke. 

11 The first two books of ' Paradise Lost ' are like two massy 
pillars of solid gold. . . . The strength is equal to the 
magnitude of the conception. ... It contains the most 
perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity. 
He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost : he sur- 
rounds it with every possible association of beauty or 
grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical." — Will- 
iam Hazlitt. 

" His name is almost identified with sublimity. He is, in 
truth, the sublimest of men. He rises, . . . by a native 



MILTON IOI 

tendency and a god-like instinct, to the contemplation of ob- 
jects of grandeur and avvfulness. . . . The grandeur of 
Milton's mind has thrown some shade over his milder beauties. 
The first two books of ' Paradise Lost ' stand pre- 
eminent for sublimity." — IV. E. Channing. 

" As of old, he went out of this lower world in search of 
the sublime. . . . The sublimity of Milton's scenery 
raises our mind. . . . The sublime is born into the poet. 
In his Christian and moral verse he aims at the sub- 
lime because the sublime is the work of enthusiastic reason." 
— Taine. 

" Among Milton's many great attributes, his mastery of 
the sublime is the one which has probably received the most 
frequent laudation." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" His lyrical poems, move they ever so softly, step loftily 
and with something of an epic air. . . . His epic is the 
first in sublime effect." — Mrs. Browning. 

" Sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of ' Para- 
dise Lost ' — sublimity variously modified, sometimes descrip- 
tive, sometimes argumentative." — Samuel Johnson. 

" Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excel- 
lence, lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. . . . He has 
made the sublimity of his style equal to that of his sentiments. 
As Milton's genius was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his 
subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thought 
of man. ... I do not know anything in ' Paradise 
Lost ' more sublime than the description where the Messiah 
is represented at the head of his angels as looking down into 
chaos, calming its confusion, riding into the midst of it, and 
drawing the first outline of the creation. . . . There is 
something sublime in this part of ' Paradise Lost,' where the 
author describes the great period of time filled with so many 
glorious circumstances. " — Addison. 

" It is certain that this author, when in a happy mood and 
employed on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime 



102 MILTON 

of any poet in any language, Homer and Lucretius and Tasso 
not excepted." — Hume. 

"His more elaborate passages have the multitudinous roll 
of thunder." — Lowell. 

" The speeches [in ' Comus '] must be read as majestic so- 
liloquies ; and he who ,so reads them will be enraptured with 
their eloquence, their sublimity, and their music." — Ma- 
caulay. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Up he rode 
Follow'd with acclamation and the sound 
Symphonious of ten thousand harps that tuned 
Angelic harmonies; the earth, the air 
Resounded, thou remember'st, for thou heard'st ; 
The heavens and all the constellations rung, 
The planets in their station listening stood, 
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. 
Open, ye heavens, your living doors ; let in 
The great Creator, from His work return'd 
Magnificent, His six days' work, a world : 
Open, and henceforth oft ; for God will deign 
To visit oft the dwellings of just men." 

— Paradise Lost. 

" Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born, 
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam, 
May I express thee unblamed ? since God is light, 
And never but in unapproached light 
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt but in thee, 
Bright effluence of bright essence increate. 
Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream, 
Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the Sun, 
Before the Heavens thou vvert, and at the voice 
Of God. as with a mantle, didst invest 
The rising world of waters dark and deep, 
Won from the void and formless infinite." 

— Paradise Lost. 



MILTON IO3 

" Ring out ye crystal spheres ! 
Once bless our human ears, 
(If ye have power to touch our senses so) 
And let your silver chime 
Move in melodious time, 
And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow. 
And with your nine-fold harmony 
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony." 

— On the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity. 

2. Harmony — Concord. — " Tennyson calls Milton the 
1 God-gifted organ-voice of England.' The voice of England 
pealing in the ears of all the world for all time. Swept on 
the flood of those great harmonies, the mighty hosts of angels 
clash together in heaven -shaking conflict. But it is the same 
full tide of music which flows down in sweetest lingering 
cadence to wander through the cool groves and fragrant val- 
leys of Paradise. . . . Both Milton and Tennyson have 
been led by their study of classic poets to understand that 
. the best music is made by the concord rather than 
the unison of sounds." — Henry van Dyke. 

" The truth is that Milton was a harmonist rather than a 
melodist. . . . He touched the keys in the epical organ- 
pipes of our various language that have never since felt the 
strain of such prevailing breath. It was in the larger move- 
ments of metre that Milton was great and original." — Lowell. 

" He has not only imagery and vocabulary but the period, 
the great musical phrase, a little long . . . but swaying 
all with it, in its superb undulation." — Edmond Scherer. 

11 Nature had endowed him in no ordinary degree with that 
most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the passion for har- 
mony." — David Masson. 

" The public has long agreed as to the merit of the most 
remarkable passages [of ' Paradise Lost '], the incomparable 
harmony of the numbers and the excellence of that style, which 
no rival has been able to equal and no parodist to degrade ; 



104 MILTON 

which display in their highest perfection the idiomatic 
powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient 
and every modern language has contributed something of 
grace, of energy, or of music." — Macaulay. 

"There is a music in Milton's majesty that fills it with 
solemn beauty. The work of the higher imagination is felt 
as the shaping power in the poem, as the Orphean music 
which has harmonized and built them into that unity which 
is the highest and last demand of art. . . . One of 
the charms of ' Lycidas ' is its solemn undertone rising like 
a chant. . . . The lines Milton gives to Paradise — in 
metrical weight and balance perfect — are equal to the height 
of loveliness he wishes to hold, and rise at the end — when we 
would think music and loveliness could be no more — into 
fuller beauty and more enchanted music." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

11 The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of 
the sentiment almost of every image. They rise or fall, pause 
or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art but without the least 
trick or affectation. . . . His verse floats up and down as 
if it had wings." — William Hazlitt. 

" The harmony of Milton's verse depends greatly upon 
alliteration. ... In the melody of ' Comus ' there is 
youthful freshness. . . . Like Vogel, he is unerringly 
and unremittingly harmonious. . . . Music is the ele- 
ment in which his genius lives." — -John Addington Symonds. 

"All the treasures of sweet and solemn sound are at his 
command. . . . Words flow through his poetry in a full 
stream of harmony. . . . This power does not belong to 
his musical ear but to his soul. . . . It is the gift or ex- 
ercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on what- 
ever it touches, and finds or frames in sounds, motions, and 
material forms correspondences and harmonies with its own 
fervid thoughts and feelings." — W. E. Charming. 

u Milton's mastery of the sublime has probably received 
the most frequent and most emphatic laudation, but his 



MILTON 105 

power over language, in its beauty and majesty, his mastery 
of form and of verse, its music and loveliness, its resources 
and charms, dignity, austerity, and awe, form the most 
marked distinctions of Milton." — IV. M. Rossetti. 

" Milton's hymns rolled with the slowness of a measured 
song and the gravity of a declamation." — Taine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence ; and from despair 
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue 
Vain war with Heaven, and by success untaught 
His proud imaginations thus displayed." 

— Paradise Lost. 
" The oracles are dumb, 
No voice or hideous hum 

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No nightly trance or breathed spell 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell." 

— On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, 

" But let my due feet never fail 

To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
And love the high embowed roof, 
With antic pillars massy proof 
And storied windows richly dight, 
Casting a dim religious light." 

— // Penseroso. 

3. Love of Natural Beauty— Picturesqueness.— 

Certain critics have called Milton a poet of books rather than 



T06 MILTON 

of nature; but this judgment is sustained neither by the 
majority of commentators nor by his works. In a letter ad- 
dressed to Diodati, in 1637, Milton writes: "What God has 
resolved concerning me, I know not, but this I know at 
least — He has instilled into me a vehement love of the beauti- 
ful. Not with so much labour, as the fables have it, is Ceres 
said to have sought her daughter Proserpine as I am wont to 
seek day and night for this idea of the beautiful through all 
the forms and faces of things." 

" There is a more potent and lasting charm in Milton's 
description of the beautiful than in the description of the sub- 
lime. The art of landscape poetry, I take it, consists in this: 
the choice and description of such actual images of external 
nature as are capable of being grouped and colored by a domi- 
nant idea or feeling. Of this art the most perfect masters are 
Milton and Tennyson. . . . Not less remarkable is the 
identity of spirit in Tennyson and Milton in their delicate 
yet wholesome sympathy with Nature, their perception of the 
relation of her moods and aspects to the human heart." 
— Henry Van Dyke. 

"His description of nature shows a free and bold hand. 
. . . With a few strong and delicate touches he impresses, 
as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would 
describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader to 
clothe them with the same radiant hues under which they 
appeared to him. . . . We have thought so much of 
Milton's strength and sublimity that we have ceased to recog- 
nize . . . that he . . . is by nature the supreme 
lover of beauty. . . . No poems possess more pure love 
of beauty than ' 77 Penseroso' ' V Allegro ' and other of Mil- 
ton's early poems." — Edward Dowden. 

" He does look at nature, but he sees her through books. 
Natural impressions are received from without, but always in 
those forms of beautiful speech in which the poets of all ages 
have clothed them. . . . Milton's attitude toward Nature 



MILTON I07 

is . . . that of a poet who feels its total influences too 
powerfully to dissect it. He is not concerned to register the 
facts and phenomena of nature but to convey the impressions 
they make on a sensitive soul." — Mark Pattison. 

" However his poems are involved, Milton has always a 
simple motive. And this is one reason why children as well as 
others understand and have pleasure in them. The picturesque- 
ness of the scenes, the clear-cut vivid outlines of the things 
described — and this is also a constant excellence of Milton, 
though he sometimes wilfully spoils it by digression — is also 
a source of delight to young and old." — Stopford Brooke. 

"We hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is 
also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged around. The 
ear indeed predominates over the eye, because it is more im- 
mediately affected, and because the language of music blends 
more immediately with and forms a more natural accompani- 
ment to the variable and indefinite associations of ideas con- 
veyed by words. But where the associations of the imagi- 
nation are not the principal thing, the individual object is 
given by Milton with equal force and beauty. He refines on 
his descriptions of beauty, loading sweets on sweets till the 
sense aches with them. . . . He describes objects of 
which he has only read in books with the vividness of actual 
observation. He makes words tell as pictures." — William 
Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Sabrina fair, 

Listen where thou art sitting 
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 

In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair ; 
Listen for dear honour's sake, 
Goddess of the silver lake ; 
Listen and save, 



108 MILTON 

Listen and appear to us, 
In name of great Oceanus ; 



By all the nymphs that nightly dance 
Upon thy streams with wily glance, 
Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 
From thy coral-paven bed, 
Till thou our summons answered have 
Listen and save." — Comus. 

" On either side 
Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub 
Fenced up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower, 
Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin 

Reared high their flourish'd heads between, and wrought 
Mosaic ; under foot the violet, 
Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay 
Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone 
Of costliest emblem." — Paradise Lost. 

" Betwixt them lawns or level downs and flocks 
Grazing the tender herb were interposed, 
Or palmy hillock ; or the flowery lap 
Of some irrigous valley spread her store, 
Flowers of all hue and without thorn the rose ; 
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves 
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine 
Lays forth her purple grape and creeps 
Luxuriant ; meanwhile murmuring waters fall 
Down the slope hills dispersed, or in the lake, 
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned 
Her crystal mirror holds, their streams unite. 
The birds their quire apply ; airs, vernal airs, 
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 
The trembling leaves." — Paradise Lost. 

4. Vastness — Amplitude. — This quality is nearly re- 
lated to the majesty of Milton's style, already discussed, and 
is continually found in connection with it ; and yet the two 



MILTON IO9 

qualities are not identical ; for we may find numerous passages 
where the treatment is grand and sonorous while the element 
of spaciousness is not present. On the other hand, however, 
we seldom if ever have spaciousness without grandeur. 

" His is the large utterance of the early gods. . . . He 
showed from the first that larger style which was to be his 
peculiar distinction. . . . He loved phrases of towering 
port, in which every member dilated stands like Teneriffe or 
Atlas. ... In reading ' Paradise Lost ' one has a feeling 
of vastness. You float under an illimitable sky, brimmed with 
sunshine or hung with constellations ; the abysses of space are 
about you ; you hear the cadenced surges of an unseen ocean ; 
thunder mutters around the horizon ; and if the scene changes, 
it is with an elemental movement like the shifting of mighty 
winds. . . . There are no such vistas and avenues of 
verse as his. In reading ' Paradise Lost ' one has a feeling of 
spaciousness which no other poet gives. . . . Whatever he 
touches swells and towers." — Lowell. 

" Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of pos- 
sibility ; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He 
sent his faculties out upon discovery into worlds where only 
imagination can travel. . . . His great excellence is am- 
plitude. . . . He had accustomed his imagination to 
unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were 
extensive. ' ' — Samuel Johnson. 

11 Milton needs the grand and infinite; he lavishes them. 
His eyes are only content in limitless space, and he produces 
colossuses to fill it. Such is Satan wallowing on the surges 
of the livid sea. Milton's hell is vast and vague. . . . 
He wanted a great and flowing verse, an ample and sounding 
strophe, vast periods of fourteen and four-and-twenty lines. 
. . His genius multiplies grand landscapes and colossal 
apparitions. ' ' — Taine. 

" Its sign [that of Milton's genius] is strength, but strength 
seraphic ; . . . a power of sustained flight, of far-reach- 



I IO MILTON 

ing vision, of lofty eloquence, such as belongs to the seraphim 
alone." — Henry Van Dyke. 

" He raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation that 
makes ' Ossa like a wart.' " — William Hazlitt. 

" No style, when one has lived in it, is so spacious and so 
majestic a place to walk in." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

" His poetry reminds us of the ocean." — W. E. Channing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
Lay floating many a rood ; in bulk as huge 
As . . . 
That sea-beast 

Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays : 
So stretched out huge in length the arch fiend lay." 

— Paradise Lost. 



<< 



He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend 

Was moving toward the shore : his ponderous shield, 

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 

Behind him cast ; the broad circumference 

Hung on his shoulder like the moon, whose orb 

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 

At evening from the top of Fesole ; 

His spear, to equal which the tallest pine, 

Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast 

Of some great Admiral, were but the wand." 

— Paradise Lost. 



MILTON III 

"Thence, full of anguish driven, 

The space of seven continued nights he rode 
With darkness ; thrice the equinoctial line 
He circled ; four times crossed the car of night 
From pole to pole, traversing each colure ; 
On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse, 
From entrance on cherubic watch, by stealth 
Found unsuspected way." — Paradise Lost. 

5. Egoism — Conscious Inspiration. — Milton him- 
self spoke of his great epic as " a work not to be raised from 
the heat of youth or the vapors of wine : like that which 
flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist or the 
trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by 
the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but 
by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with 
all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with 
the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips 
of whom He pleases." 

" There is an intolerant egotism which identifies itself 
with omnipotence, and whose sublimity is its apology ; there 
is an intolerable egotism which subordinates the sun to the 
watch in its own fob. Milton was of the former kind. . . • 
I have no manner of doubt, that he, like Dante, believed him- 
self divinely inspired with what he had to utter. 
From the first he looked upon himself as a man dedicated and 
set apart. . . . Plainly enough, here was a man who had 
received something more than episcopal ordination. 
Milton's respect for himself and his own mind and its move- 
ments rises well-nigh to veneration." — Lowell. 

" Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in 
Milton even in his youth, may be noted, also, 
a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his 
own powers. Throughout all of Milton's works there may be 
discerned a vein of this noble egotism, this unbashful self- 
assertion. Frequently, in arguing with an opponent or in 



112 MILTON 

setting forth his own views on any subject of discussion, he 
passes, by a very slight topical connection, into an account of 
himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the 
matter in question ; in his later years Milton evidently be- 
lieved himself to be, if not the greatest man in England, at 
least the greatest writer." — David Masson. 

" Milton loves to present to his own imagination the glory 
of his strength and the greatness of his past achievements 
and his present afflicted state. . . . He looked upon his 
strength as something intrusted to him." — Edward Dowden. 

"He had a lofty and steady confidence in himself." — 
Samuel Johnson. 

" A sense of divine benediction runs through his epic poem 
from beginning to end." — Mrs. Browning. 

11 His poetry is full of personal memories, and his polemi- 
cal works become at times memories of his life, passionate 
and naif memories, where the writer reveals himself without 
any disguise." — Bdmond Scherer. 

" ' Comus ' is marked by more self-conscious art than any 
poem of its character which England has yet known. . . . 
His later poems reveal his sustained purpose to write a heroic 
poem. . . It [his style] reveals the man more than the 

thought. " — Stopford Brooke. 

11 Every thing about him became as it were pontifical, al- 
most sacramental." — Augustine Birr ell. 

" What other poet has shown so sincere a sense of the 
grandeur of his vocation and a moral effort so sublime and 
constant to make and keep himself worthy of it ? " — Matthew 
Arnold. 

11 He had girded himself up and, as it were, sanctified him- 
self for this service from his youth." — William Hazlitt. 



MILTON 113 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Or, if Sion's hill 
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, 
That with no middle flight intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for Thou knovvest ; Thou from the first 
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss, 
And made it pregnant ; what in me is dark 
Illumine ; what is low raise and support ; 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to man." — Paradise Lost. 

" So much the rather thou, celestial light, 

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
Irradiate ; there plant eyes ; all mist from thence 
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
Of things invisible to mortal sight." — Paradise Lost. 

" If answerable style I can obtain 
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns 
Her nightly visitation unimplored, 
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
Easy my unpremeditated verse ; 
Since first this subject for heroic song 
Pleased me long choosing and beginning late." 

— Paradise Lost. 

6. Moral Elevation — Purity. — Carlyle has called Mil- 
ton " the moral king of English literature." In his second 
" Defence of the People of England " Milton declares, con- 
cerning his experience on the Continent : " I again take God 



114 MILTON 

to witness that in all these places, where so many things are 
considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all prof- 
ligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually before me, 
that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could 
not the eyes of God. ' ' And later he writes : " He who would 
not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
things, ought himself to be a true poem." Milton was sen- 
suous, as he declared all poetry should be, but he was never 
sensual. His conception of the moral possibilities of poetry 
is best expressed in his own words : " These [poetic] abilities, 
wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely 
bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every na- 
tion ; and are of power beside the office of a pulpit, to im- 
breed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and 
public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind and set 
the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty 
hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness and 
what he works and what he suffers to be wrought with high 
providence in his church ; to sing the victorious agonies of 
martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious 
nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of 
Christ." 

" Milton consecrated his thoughts as well as his words. 
He praised everywhere chaste love, piety, generosity, 
heroic force. . . . They [the Masques] were amusements 
for the castle ; he made out of them lectures on magnanimity 
and constancy. . . . He was born with the instinct of 
noble things. ' ' — Taine. 

" Look at the Lady in ' Comus ' ! she is the sweet embodi- 
ment of Milton's youthful ideal of virtue, clothed with the 
fairness of opening womanhood, armed with the sun-clad pow- 
er of chastity. Darkness and danger cannot stir the constant 
mood of her calm thoughts ! Evil things have no power upon 
her, but shrink abashed from her presence." — Heivy Van 
Dyke. 



MILTON I I 5 

" Thy soul was like a star ; and dwelt apart ; 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on itself did lay." — Wordsworth. 
"His sympathy with festivities is modified by his native 
gravity and holiness to the quiet delight in those beautiful 
things which had in them purity and temperance. 
The stately purity of thought and life is one of the foundations 
of his stately style." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

" There are a few characters which have stood the closest 
scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the 
furnace and have proved true, . . . and which are 
visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the most 
High. Of these was Milton. Certain high moral dispositions 
Milton had from nature ; he sedulously trained and developed 
them until they became habits of great power. . . . Mil- 
ton's power of style has for its great character elevation, which 
clearly comes in the main from a moral quality in him — his 
pureness. How high, clear, and splendid is his pureness ; 
and how intimately does its might enter into the voice of his 
poetry ! What gives Milton's professions such a stamp of their 
own is their accent of absolute sincerity. In this elevated 
strain of moral pureness his life was really pitched ; its strong 
immortal beauty passed into the diction and rhythm of his 
poetry." — Matthew Arnold. 

" Milton's every line breathes sanctity of thought and pure- 
ness of manners, except when the train of narration requires 
the introduction of the rebellious spirits, and even then they 
are compelled to acknowledge the subjugation to God in such 
a manner as excites reverence and confirms piety." — Samuel 
Jolmson. 

" Milton stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man 
among men, and reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the 
new-born race. He is identified in the mind with all select 



Il6 MILTON 

and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human race. 
It is the ardent aspiration after pure and noble life, 
the aspiration which stamps every line he wrote, verse or prose, 
with a dignity as of an heroic age. This gives consistency to 
all his utterances." — Mark Patiison. 

" In his long commerce with ancient and modern writers, 
he was able to preserve the native purity of his soul, to form 
a sublime ideal bent of purity, poetry, and fame." — Edmo?id 
Scherer. 

" He reverenced moral purity and elevation, ... as 
the inspirer of the intellect and especially of the higher efforts 
of poetry. His moral character was as strongly marked as his 
intellectual, and it may be expressed in one word, magnanim- 
ity." — W. E. Channing. 

" He had a gravity in his temper, not melancholy ; not till 
the later part of his life sour, morbid, or ill-tempered ; but 
a certain serenity of mind — a mind not condescending to lit- 
tle things.' ' — Walter Bagehot. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" So dear to heaven is saintly chastity 
That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt ; 
And in clear dream and solemn vision, 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begins to cast a beam on th' outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
Till all be made immortal."— Comus. 

" Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth 
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, 
And with those few art eminently seen, 
That labour up the hill of heavenly truth. 



MILTON 117 

The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, 
Chosen thou hast ; and they that overween, 
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, 
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. 

Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends 
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, 
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure 

Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends 
Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night, 
Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure." 

— To a Virtuous Youtig Lady. 

" Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought 
The better fight, who single hast maintained 
Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 
And for the testimony of truth hast borne 
Universal reproach far worse to bear 
Than violence ; for this was all thy care — 
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
Judged thee perverse." — Paradise Lost. 

7. Fondness for the Indefinite. — "He was fonder 
of the vague, perhaps I should better say the indefinite, where 
more is meant than meets the ear, than any other of our poets. 
. He produces his effects by dilating our imaginations 
with an impalpable hint rather than by concentrating them 
upon too precise particulars. . . . He generalizes always 
instead of specifying. . . . He is too wise to hamper 
himself with any statement for which he can be brought to 
book, but wraps himself in a mist of looming indefiniteness. " 
— Lowell. 

" His characters rise before our eyes like superhuman statues; 
and, their far removal rendering vain our curious hands, pre- 
serves our admiration and their majesty. We rise further and 
higher to the origin of things, among eternal beings, to the 
commencement of thought and life, to the battle of God in 
this unknown world, where sentiments and existences, raised 



I 1 8 MILTON 

above the ken of man, elude his judgment and criticism to 
command his veneration and awe." — Taine. 

"The English poet [Milton] has never thought of taking 
the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast 
bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in 
length and floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth- 
born enemies of Jove or to the sea-monster which the mariner 
mistakes for an island. . . . Milton avoids the loathsome 
details [of Dante] and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn 
and tremendous imagery." — Samuel Johnson. 

"There is no subject so vast or so terrible as to repel or 
intimidate him. . . . The overpowering grandeur of a 
theme kindles and attracts him. . . . An indefiniteness in 
the description of Satan's person excites without shocking the 
imagination." — IV. E. Chamiing. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"A dungeon horrible on all sides round 
As one great furnace flamed, yet from these flames 
No light but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover sights of woe, 
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades." — Paradise Lost. 

" Beyond this flood a frozen continent 

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems 
Of ancient pile." — Paradise Lost. 

" Before their eyes in sudden view appear 
The secrets of the hoary deep — a dark 
Illimitable ocean, without bound, 

Without dimension ; where length, breadth, and height 
And time and place are lost ; where eldest Night 
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise 
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand." — Paradise Lost. 



MILTON 119 

8. Profound Learning— Intellectuality. — This en- 
dowment appears continually both in Milton's prose and in 
his poetry. In his early manhood Milton writes to a friend as 
follows : " I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of 
my lips in the stream of these [the classical] languages, but 
in proportion to my years have swallowed the most copious 
draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to 
feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others." 

" His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the 
languages which are considered either learned or polite ; He- 
brew with its two dialects, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and 
Spanish. In Latin his skill was such as places him in the first 
rank of writers and critics ; he appears to have cultivated 
Italian with uncommon diligence. . . . When he can- 
not raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight 
by its fertility. . . . He was master of his language in its 
full extent. " — Samuel Johnson. 

"The author unfolds the treasures of his learning, heaping 
up the testimony of Scripture, passages from the fathers, and 
quotations from the poets, laying sacred and profane antiquity 
alike under contribution, and subtly discussing the sense of 
this and that Greek or Hebrew term." — Edmond Scherer. 

"Milton's learning attends him at every step; he never 
utters himself except through learned lips, in well-considered 
phrase. . . . He is the poet of the scholars." — J. C. 
Shairp. 

"Milton seems ambitious of letting us know, by his excur- 
sions on free will and predestination and his many glances 
upon history, astronomy, geography, and the like, as well as 
by terms and phrases he sometimes makes use of, that he is 
acquainted with the whole circle of arts and sciences." 
— Addison. 

" He was a profound scholar, a man of vast compass of 
thought, imbued thoroughly with all ancient and modern 
learning, to master, to mould, to impregnate with his intel- 



120 MTLTON 

lecttial power, his great and various acquisitions. 
The very splendor of his poetic fame has tended to obscure 
or conceal the extent of his mind. . . . Milton has that 
universality which marks the highest order of intellect." 
— W. E. Channing. 

" The power of his mind is stamped on every line. . . . 
We feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, 
which, the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more dis- 
tinct from them." — William Hazlitt. 

* 'Vast knowledge, close logic, grand passion; these were 
his marks. . . . He was eminently learned, elegant, trav- 
elled, philosophic, and of high worldly culture for the times. 
. The phrases in Milton are immense; page-long periods 
are necessary to enclose the train of so many linked arguments 
and so many accumulated metaphors around the governing 
thought. ... In the limits of a single work are found 
the events and the feelings of several centuries and of a whole 
nati on . ' ' — Taine. 

"Milton is not a man of the fields but of books. His 
life is his study, and when he steps abroad into the air he car- 
ries his study thoughts with him." — Mark Pattison. 

"Milton and Tennyson are the most learned, the most 
classical of all English poets." — Edward Dowden. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned 
Or of revived Adonis, or renowned 
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son ; 
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king 
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. 

— pleasing was his shape, 
And lovely ; never since of serpent kind 
Lovelier ; not those that in Illyria changed 
Hermione and Cadmus, or the god 



MILTON 121 

In Epidaurus ; nor to which transformed 
Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen ; 
He with Olympias ; this with her who bore 
Scipio the height of Rome." — Paradise Lost. 

'* Black, but such as in esteem 

Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 

Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 

To set her beauty's praise above 

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended : 

Yet thou art higher far descended ; 

Thee, bright-haired Vesta long of yore 

To solitary Saturn bore ; 

His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, 

Such mixture was not held a stain) 

Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 

He met her, and in secret shades 

Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 

While yet there was no fear of Jove." — 77 Penseroso. 

" Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and call'd 
His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
High over-arched imbower; or scattered sedge 
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
Had vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
From the safe shore their floating carcasses." 

— Paradise Lost. 

o. Adaptation of Sound to Sense. — " I imagine that 
there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical expres- 
sion, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the 
verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other 
writers, whether of rhyme or of blank verse, put together (with 
the exception of Shakespeare). . . . Read any other 



122 MILTON 

blank verse except Milton's — Thompson's, Young's, Cowper's, 
Wordsworth's — and it will be found, from the want of this 
same insight 'into the hidden soul of harmony,' to be mere 
lumbering prose." — William Hazlitt. 

" We may be certain that when so great an artist in verse 
as Milton was writing, lines which seem to us unmusical were 
made so with a purpose. . . . He insists upon accent 
which seems to us strangely put, in order that he may make 
some particular thought or some particular thing in his descrip- 
tion emphatic. " — Stopford Brooke. 

" He was master of his language in its full extent ; and has 
selected the melodious words with such diligence that from 
his books alone the art of English poetry might be learned." 
— Samuel Johnson. 

" Rarely or never was sense better linked to sound than in 
some of the lines of i V Allegro' and ' // Penseroso? " — W. 
M. Rossetti. 

" His words are the words of one who made a study of the 
language, as a poet studies language, searching its capacities 
for the expression of surging emotion. Milton is the first 
English writer who, possessing in the ancient models a stand- 
ard of the effect which could be produced by the choice of 
words, set himself to the conscious study of our native tongue, 
with a firm faith in its as yet undeveloped powers as an in- 
strument of thought." — David Masson. 

" His rhythm is as admirable when it is unusual as when it 
is simplest." — Matthew Arnold. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But chief the spacious hall 
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, 
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive." 

— Paradise Lost. 



MILTON 123 

" Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
Jest and youthful Jollity, 
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, 
Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, 
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
Sport that wrinkled Care derides 
And Laughter, holding both his sides ; 
Come and trip it, as you go, 
On the light fantastic toe." — V Allegro. 

11 The oracles are dumb ; 
No voice or hideous hum 

Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving ; 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 

With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving." 

— Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. 

11 Meanwhile welcome joy and feast, 
Midnight shout and revelry, 
Tipsy dance and jollity. 
Braid your locks with rosy twine, 
Dropping odours, dropping wine. 
Rigour now is gone to bed, 
And advice with scrupulous head. 
Strict age and sour severity, 
With their grave saws in slumber lie. 
We, that are of purer fire, 
Imitate the starry quire ; 
Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, 
Lead in swift rounds the months and years." 

— Comus, 

10. Equanimity — Serene Dignity.— While Milton's 
prose is frequently disfigured with ill-natured expressions, his 
verse generally flows on undisturbed, like a deep stream. 

"The strength of his mind overcame every calamity 
Neither blindness nor gout nor age nor penury nor domestic 



124 MILTON 

afflictions nor political disappointments nor abuse nor pro- 
scription nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and 
majestic patience." — Macanlay. 

" He did not face objects on a level, as a mortal, but from 
on high, like those archangels of Goethe, who embrace at a 
glance the whole ocean lashing its coasts and the earth rolling 
on, wrapt in the harmony of the fraternal stars." — Tai?ie. 

" Himself a poem. Grave, serene, wholly given up to the 
contemplation of heavenly things, slowly maturing the work 
of his life, isolated in his generation by the very force of his 
genius. His soul, as Wordsworth has said, was ' like a star 
and dwelt apart.' He has an indefinable serenity and vic- 
toriousness, a sustained equality, an indomitable power; one 
might almost say that he wraps us in the skirt of his robe and 
wafts us with him to the eternal regions where he himself 
dwells. ' ' — Edmond Scherer. 

"As a man moving among other men, he possessed, in 
that moral seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which 
characterized him, a spring of ever present pride, dignifying 
his whole bearing among his fellows, and at times arousing 
him to a kingly intolerance. He was one of those servants 
to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of the ten 
talents. ' ' — David Masson. 

" The strength of his mind overcame every calamity. 
There is no such unfailing dignity as his." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide ; 
And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker and present 
My true account, lest He, returning, chide ; 
' Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? ' 
I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent 



MILTON 125 

That murmur, soon replies, ' God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait.' " 

— Sonnet on His Blindness. 



" Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, 
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot, 
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, 
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
In liberty's defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 
Content, though blind, had I no better guide." 

— To Cyriack Skinner. 

" But not to me returns 

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 

Or sight of vernal bloom or summer rose, 

Or flocks or herds or human face divine ; 

But cloud instead, and ever during dark. 

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 

Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 

Presented with a universal blank 

Of nature's works to me expunged and raised, 

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 

So much the rather then, Celestial Light, 

Shine inward, and the mind thro' all her powers 

Irradiate ; there plant eyes ; all mist from them 

Purge and disperse that I may see and tell 

Of things invisible to mortal sight." — Paradise Lost. 



126 MILTON 

II. Incongruity— Contradiction — Unnaturalness. 

— A certain class of critics, notably among the French, is 
fond of making merry over Milton's incongruity. While the 
consensus of critical opinion seems not to uphold Scherer's 
dictum that " Paradise Lost " is "a. poem which is at once the 
most extraordinary and at the same time the most intolerable 
in existence," we cannot fairly ignore the force of these ad- 
verse criticisms. 

"The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the 
whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with incongruity ; 
and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the favorite 
of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased. 
In ' Lycidas,' the shepherd is likewise now a feeder 
of sheep and afterwards an ecclesiastical preacher, a superin- 
tendent of a Christian flock." — Samuel Jolmson. 

"Milton is a clumsy imitator of the Greeks, who carica- 
tures creation and who, while Moses represents the Eternal 
Being as creating the world by his word, makes the Messiah 
take a big compass out of a cupboard in heaven to trace out 
the work. . . . His marriage of Sin and Death, and the 
snakes of which Sin is delivered, make any man of tolerably del- 
icate taste sick, and his long description of a hospital is only 
good for a grave-digger. . . . The archangel Michael 
leads Adam to a hill and delivers a complete course of lectures 
to him on sacred history. < Paradise Lost ' is not 

only a theological poem — two words which cry out at finding 
themselves united — but it is at the same time a commentary 
on texts of Scripture. ... In fixing on such a subject, 
Milton was obliged to treat the whole story as a literal and 
authentic history ; and, worse still, to take a side on the 
questions which it starts. Now these questions are the very 
thorniest in theology : and so it comes about that Milton, who 
intended to instruct us, merely launches us on a sea of diffi- 
culties. . . . The long discourses with which he fills the 
gaps between the action are only sermons, and do but make 



MILTON 1 27 

evident the absence of dramatic matter. . . . We see a 
battle, but we cannot take either the fight or the fighters seri- 
ously. A God who can be resisted is not a God. 
The poem only became possible at the cost of this impossi- 
bility. . . . He makes Lucifer masquerade, now as a 
toad, now as a pigmy; he makes the devil fire cannon in 
heaven. When the day comes for him to be able at last to 
realize the dreams of his youth and endow his country with 
an epic, he will construct it of two matters, of gold and of 
clay, of sublimity and of scholasticism, and will leave us a 
poem which is at once the most extraordinary and at the 
same time the most intolerable. ' Paradise Lost ' has shared 
the same fate of its hero, that is to say, of the devil. The 
idea of Satan is a contradictory idea; for it is contradictory 
to know God and yet attempt rivalry with Him." — Ed??wnd 
Scherer. 

"Ecstasy alone renders visible and credible the objects of 
ecstasy. If you tell us of the exploits of the Deity as you tell 
us of Cromwell's, in a grave and lofty tone, we do not see 
God ; and, as He constitutes the whole of your poem, we do 
not see anything. . . . Milton's poem, while it sup- 
presses lyrical illusion, admits critical inquiry. . . . No 
longer hearing odes, we would see objects and souls : we ask 
that Adam and Eve should act in conformity with their prim- 
itive nature ; that God, Satan, and Messiah should act and 
feel in conformity with their superhuman nature ; Shake- 
speare would hardly have been equal to the task; Milton, 
the logician and reasoner, failed in it. He gives us correct 
solemn discourse and gives us nothing more ; his charac- 
ters are speeches, and in their sentiments we find only heaps 
of puerilities and contradictions. . . . I listen [to Adam 
and Eve] and I hear an English household, two readers 
of the period — Colonel Hutchinson and his wife. Good 
Heavens ! dress them at once. People with so much culture 
should have invented before all a pair of trousers and modesty. 



128 MILTON 

. . This Adam entered Paradise via England. . . 
She [Eve], like a good housewife, talks about the menu. 

She makes sweet wine, perry, creams ; scatters flowers 
and leaves under the table. What an excellent housewife ! 
What a great many votes she will gain among the country 
squires, when Adam stands for Parliament ! Adam belongs 
to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan. . . . The an- 
gel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer. 
At table Eve listens to the angel's stories, then discreetly rises 
at dessert, when they are getting into politics. . . . She 
rebels with a little prick of proud vanity, like a young lady 
who mayn't go out by herself. She has her way, goes alone, 
and eats the apple. Here interminable speeches come down 
on the reader, as numerous and cold as winter showers. . . . 
The serpent seduces Eve by a collection of arguments wor- 
thy of the punctilious Chillingworth. . . . What is 
smaller than a god sunk to the level of a king and a man ! 

Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a 
suitable state, something like Charles I. We per- 

ceive that Milton's Jehovah is connected with the theologian 
James I., versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists, 
very clever at the dislinguo, and before all incomparably te- 
dious. . . . Goethe's God, half abstraction, half legend, 
source of calm oracles, a vision just beheld after a pyramid of 
ecstatic strophes, greatly excels this Miltonic God, a business 
man, a schoolmaster, an ostentatious man. . . . Milton's 
heaven is a Whitehall filled with bedizened footmen. The an- 
gels are the choristers, whose business is to sing cantatas about 
the king. . . . Milton describes the tables, the dishes, 
the wine, the vessels. It is a popular festival ; I miss the fire- 
works, the bell-ringing, as in London. . . . Heaven is 
partitioned off like a good map. . . . These sorry angels 
have their minds as well disciplined as their limbs ; they have 
passed their youth in a class in logic and in a drill school. 

What a heaven ! It is enough to disgust a man with 



MILTON 129 

Paradise ; anyone would rather enter Charles I.'s troop of 
lackeys or Cromwell's Ironsides. We have orders of the day, 
a hierarchy, exact submission, extra-duties, disputes, regu- 
lated ceremonials, prostration, etiquette, furbished arms, ar- 
senals, depots of chariots and ammunition. Was it worth 
while leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, build- 
ings, artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutation, and 
the Almanac de Gotha? " — Tai?ie. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" So down they sat, 
And to their viands fell ; nor seemingly 
The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss 
Of theologians ; but with keen dispatch 
Of real hunger and concoctive heat 
To transubstantiate ; what redounds, transpires 
Through spirits with ease ; nor wonder, if by fire 
Of sooty coal the empiric alchemist 
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, 
Metals or drossiest ore to perfect gold, 
As from the mine. Meanwhile at table, Eve 
Ministered naked, and their flowing cups 
With pleasant liquors drowned." 

— Paradise Lost. 

" If this be our condition, thus to dwell 
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe, 
Subtle or violent, we not endued 
Single with like defence, wherever met, 
How are we happy, still in fear of harm ? 
But harm precedes not sin : only our foe, 
Tempting, affronts us with his foul esteem 
Of our integrity : his foul esteem 
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns 
Foul on himself ; then wherefore shunned or feared 
By us ? who rather double honour, gain 
9 



130 MILTON 

From his surmise proved false, find peace within, 
Favor from Heaven, our witness from the event. 
And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed 
Alone, without exterior help sustained ? " 

— Paradise Lost. 

" Immediate in a flame, 
From those deep-throated engines belched, 

. . . . Chained thunderbolts and hail 
Of iron globes ; which on the victor host 
Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote, 
That whom they hit nor\e on their feet might stand, 
Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell 
By thousands, angel on archangel rolled." 

— Paradise Lost. 



DRYDEN, 1631-1700 

Biographical Outline. — John Dryden, born August 9, 
1 63 1, at Aldwinckle Allsaints, Northamptonshire; his father 
was a justice of the peace, the third son of a baronet, and his 
mother the daughter of a clergyman ; Dryden gets " his first 
learning" at Tichmarsh, where a monument was afterward 
erected to him and to his parents, who were buried there ; later 
he obtains a scholarship at Westminster School, where Busby 
is his head-master and Locke and South are his school-mates ; 
he enters Trinity College, Cambridge, on a scholarship in 
July, 1650 ; he writes a few elegies and commendatory poems 
before entering Cambridge; in July, 1652, he is " discom- 
muned," and is compelled to apologize to the vice-master for 
contumacy, but is graduated B.A. in January, 1654 ; his 
father dies in June, 1654, leaving to Dryden an estate worth 
^40 a year, after deducting his mother's life-interest ; he 
does not try for an advanced university degree, probably be- 
cause of a lack of means ; his kinsmen sided with the people 
against Charles I., and his cousin became chamberlain to 
Cromwell and was one of Charles's judges ; Dryden is said 
to have begun life as a clerk to this cousin ; upon Crom- 
well's death, in September, 1658, Dryden writes his " Heroic 
Stanzas," which are published in a volume with poems by 
Waller and Sprat. 

After the Restoration, Dryden takes lodgings with one 
Herringman, a bookseller of the New Exchange, London, for 
whom he is reported (doubtless incorrectly) to have been 
hack-writer; Herringman publishes Dryden's books till 1679, 
when the poet meets Sir Robert Howard, who seems to have 
aided him; on December 1, 1663, Dryden is married to 

131 



132 DRYDEN 

Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of his friend ; the lady had 
been the subject of some scandals, and Dryden is said to have 
been bullied into the marriage by her brothers ; her father 
settles upon them a small estate in Wiltshire, but a difference 
of prior social standing and apparent mutual infidelity make 
the marriage an unhappy one, although both Dryden and his 
wife were warmly attached to their children ; in November, 
1662, Dryden is elected a member of the Royal Society, where 
he associates with Bacon, Gilbert, Boyle, and Harvey ) about 
this time the opening of the King's Theatre and the Duke's 
Theatre in London causes Dryden to begin play-writing; his 
first acted play, " The Wild Gallant," was performed in Feb- 
ruary, 1663, and failed ; during the same year his second play, 
"The Wild Ladies," succeeded fairly, at the same theatre ; 
Pepys records seeing Dryden in February, 1664, at Covent 
Garden coffee-house, " with all the wits of the town ; " early 
in 1665 a third play, "The Indian Emperor," is brought 
out with marked success. 

While the theatres are closed, from May, 1665, to De- 
cember, 1666, because of the Plague and the great London 
fire, Dryden retires to a seat of his father-in-law at Charlton 
in Wiltshire, where his son is born ; during this retreat he 
composes his "Annus Mh'abilis" and his "Essay on Dra- 
matic Poesy," defending the use of rhyme in the drama; 
the " Essay " is published in March, 1667 ; Dryden's fourth 
drama, " Secret Love," is produced at the King's Theatre, and 
Nell Gwyn is one of the personce ; during 1667 he also pro- 
duces " Sir Martin Mar-all," one of his most successful plays; 
about this time he makes a contract with the King's Theatre 
company to provide them with three plays a year, in consid- 
eration of receiving one-tenth of the profits of the theatre ; 
he did not provide all the plays stipulated, but received as 
high as ^400 a year, as his share of the profits, until the burn- 
ing of the theatre in 1672 ; in 1669 he published an opera 
called "The State of Innocence," founded, with Milton's 



DRYDEN 133 

permission, on "Paradise Lost"; of his heroic tragedies, 
" Tyrannic Love " appeared in 1669 and " Almanzar " and 
" Almahide " in 1670 ; his " All for Love " is produced in 
1672; in 1668 (at the King's request) the Archbishop of 
Canterbury confers upon Dryden the degree of M.A., and in 
1670 he is made poet-laureate and historiographer, offices 
which, combined, gave him a salary of ^200 a year, with a 
butt of Canary wine; his total annual income between 1670 
and 1 68 1, from all sources, averaged from ^420 to £si1- 

Between 1668 and 1681 he produced about fourteen plays ; 
the comedies were most licentious, gave offence even then, and 
have been deservedly lost ; in 1673 he produces " Amboyna," 
a tragedy founded on the existing relation of the English 
with the Dutch, and in 1681 another called "The Spanish 
Friar," founded on the Popish plot; his last and finest 
rhymed tragedy, " Aurengzebe," was produced in 1675, and is 
said to have been read in manuscript and revised by Charles 
II.; about this time Dryden proposes to write an epic poem, 
and asks for a pension on that ground, admitting that he 
" never felt himself very fit for tragedy ; " he receives a pen- 
sion of ^100 a year, but writes, instead of an epic, his finest 
play, " All for Love ; " in 1679 he brings out an alteration of 
" Troilus and Cressida," in which he pays further homage to 
Shakespeare. 

In 1 67 1 his " heroic tragedies " are ridiculed in the famous 
"Rehearsal," written by the Duke of Buckingham, Butler, 
Sprat, and others; he has various literary controversies, and is 
beaten by ruffians, hired by his enemies, in December, 1679 ; 
the main cause was the attribution to Dryden of Mulgrave's 
"Essay on Satire," written in 1675 and reflecting severely 
upon the private life of prominent personages ; Dryden was 
charged by various libellers with sympathy with Shaftesbury in 
his opposition to the Court, and so, in November, 1681, he 
demonstrated his loyalty to Charles II. by publishing the first 
of his great satires, " Absalom and Achitophel ; " Tate de- 



134 DRYDEN 

clares that the theme of the satire was suggested to Dryden by 
Charles ; it obtained at once an enormous sale, and is still re- 
garded as " the finest satire in our language for masculine in- 
sight and for vigor of expression ; " his second great satire, 
"The Medal," appears in March, 1682 ; partisans of Shaftes- 
bury reply in half a dozen satires upon Dryden, and he rejoins 
with " Mac Flecknoe," published October 4, 1682, especially 
directed against Shad well, who had repudiated his former 
friendship for Dryden, and had published " The Medal of 
John Boyes [Dryden] ; " in November, 1682, appeared a sec- 
ond part of "Absalom and Achitophel," in which two hun- 
dred lines were written by Dryden and the rest by Nahum 
Tate ; during the same month Dryden publishes his " Religio 
Laid " (a defence of the Anglican position) and " The Duke 
of Guise," a satire, of which the greater part was written by 
Nathaniel Lee ; during 1682-84 ne writes many prologues, 
epilogues, and prefaces, and secures as much as three guineas 
for each. 

In 1684 he translates Maimbourg's " History of the 
League," and in that and the following year publishes two 
volumes of " Miscellaneous Poems," including contributions 
from other writers; evidence taken from his private letters at 
this time shows that he was in financial straits, and was writing 
under the spur of poverty; in December, 1683, after an ap- 
peal for aid to the Earl of Rochester, he is appointed collector 
of customs in the port of London, an office which, through its 
fees, somewhat relieved him financially ; near the close of 
Charles's life Dryden writes two operas, " Albion and Al- 
banius " and " King Arthur," in honor of the King's politi- 
cal successes ; the latter opera was produced in June, 1685, 
after the accession of James ; Dryden 's offices and his pen- 
sion of ^100 are continued under James II.; in January, 
1686, he is reported to have been seen, with his two sons and 
Mrs. Nelly (mistress to the late King), "going to Mass; " 
his conversion to Romanism at this time seems to have been 



DRYDEN 135 

mainly from venal motives ; he seems, however, gradually to 
have become a sincere adherent of the Catholic Church, and 
soon begins to write in her favor ; he translates but does not 
publish Vorillar's " History of Religious Revolutions," and is 
employed by James to answer Stillingfleet, who had assailed 
papers upon Catholicism written by James himself; in April, 
1687, Dryden publishes " The Hind and the Panther," his 
most famous work ; this poem was parodied by Prior and 
others ; Dryden also translates a life of St. Francis Xavier and 
writes "Britannia Rediviva" a congratulatory poem on the 
birth of James's son, in June, 1688. 

By the Revolution of 1688 Dryden loses all his offices, and 
is succeeded as laureate by Shadwell ; he receives financial aid 
from the Earl of Dorset, and returns to his former occupation 
of play-writing ; " Don Sebastian," one of his best tragedies, 
and his comedy " Amphitrion " are performed in 1690; in 
1 69 1 he brings out his opera " King Arthur," altered in its 
politics to fit the times; in 1692 he produces " Cleomenes," 
which was finished by Southerne, because of Dryden's illness; 
his last drama, " Love Triumphant," was produced in 1694, 
but failed ; in 1698 Dryden is attacked, with other contem- 
poraries, in the famous work of Jeremy Collier against the 
theatre, and he acknowledges that Collier's strictures are in 
part just ; meantime he had written, in honor of the Countess 
of Abingdon, a stranger to Dryden, his elegiac poem " Eleo- 
nora," probably from purely pecuniary motives; in 1693 he 
publishes a translation of Juvenal and Persius and a new 
volume of " Miscellanies; " about 1693 he begins his trans- 
lation of Virgil, which is published by subscription in July, 
1697; Pope declares that Dryden received ^1,200 for the 
" Virgil ; " he also received presents from various noble pa- 
trons, and offended his publisher, Tonson, by steadfastly re- 
fusing to dedicate the " Virgil " to William III. ; in 1697 he 
begins his " Fables," consisting of translations from Homer's 
"Iliad," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Chaucer, and Boccaccio, 



136 DRYDEN 

amounting to 12,000 verses when published in 1700; about 
1697 he again appeals to the Government for aid, but says 
that he " cannot buy favor by forsaking his religion ; " in 1697 
he also writes for a London musical society his famous ode, 
" Alexander's Feast ; " during his later years he spends most 
of his time at Will's Coffee-house, surrounded by young wits 
and worshipped as literary dictator ; early in 1 700 he writes an 
additional scene for Fletcher's " Pilgrim," in preparation for 
its performance as a benefit for Fletcher's son ; Dryden also 
carries on a correspondence with "enthusiastic ladies," and 
is courted by Congreve, Addison, and other prominent writ- 
ers ; he dies in his house in Gerrard Street, London, May 1, 
1700. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON DRYDEN. 

Gosse, E., "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." London, 

1889, Macmillan, 9-40. 
Lowell, J. R., " Among My Books. " Boston, 1872, Osgood, 1-70. 
Johnson, S., "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets." London, 

1854, John Murray, 269-391. 
Masson, D., " English Poets." Cambridge, 1856, Macmillan, 88-139. 
Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1874, 

Holt, v. index. 
Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1876, Bell, 

91-112. 
Macaulay, T. B., "Works." London, 1871, Longman, Green & Co., 

v. index. 
Saintsbury, G., " English Men of Letters." London, 1881, Macmillan, 

1-92. 
Scott, Sir Walter, " Dryden, " with a biography. Edinburgh, 1882, 

T. & A. Constable, 1-446. 
Rossetti, Wm., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, E. Moxon, 

92-107. 
Mitford, J., " Life of Dryden." Boston, 1864, Little, Brown & Co., 

1-146. 
Browning, E. B., "The English Poets." London, 1863, Chapman & 

Hall, 183-211. 



DRYDEN 137 

Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge, 78-81. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1870, Claxton, 267-297. 
Craik, G. L., "English Literature." New York, 1869, Scribner, 115- 

119. 
Bell, E., " Life of Dryden." London, 1839, Longman, Green & Co., 

1-69. 
Skelton, J., "Essays in History and Biography." Edinburgh, 1883, 

Black, 143-165. 
Collier, W. F., "History of English Literature." London, 1892, 

Nelson, 236-243. 
Hallam, H., " Works." New York, 1859, Harper, v. index. 
Masson, D., "Three Devils," etc. London, 1874, Macmillan, 153— 

235- 
Edinburgh Review, 47 : 1-36 (Macaulay) ; 13 : 1 16-135 (H. Hallam). 
Blackwood's Magazine, 57 : 133-158 and 503-528 (J. Wilson). 
British Quarterly Review, 20 : 1-44 (D. Masson). 
North American Review, 107 : 186-248 (J. R. Lowell). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Cold Intellectuality — Lack of Emotion. — 

" These manners of Dryden show that literature had become a 
matter of study rather than inspiration, an employment for 
the taste rather than for the enthusiasm, a source of distraction 
rather than of emotion. His was a singularly solid and judi- 
cious mind; an excellent reasoner, accustomed to discriminate 
his ideas, armed with good, long-meditated proofs, strong in 
discussion, asserting principles, establishing his sub-divisions, 
citing authorities, drawing inferences. His style is well 
moulded, exact, and simple, free from the affectations and 
ornaments with which Pope afterwards burdened his own. 
He shows a mind constantly upright, bending rather from 
conventionality than from nature, with dash and afflatus, 
occupied with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to 
his convictions. Pamphlets and dissertations in verse, satires, 
letters, translations and imitations, this is the field on which 
logical faculties and the art of writing find their best occupa- 



138 DRYDEN 

tion. This is the true domain of Dryden and of classical 
reason. He develops, defines, concludes ; he declares his 
thought, then takes it up again, that his reader may receive it 
prepared, and, having received it, may retain it. 7 Dryden is 
the most classical of all the English poets. The poetic genius 
of this man was preeminently robust and unromantic." — 
Taine. 

"He is best upon a level table-land; it is true, a very 
high level, but still somewhere between the loftier peaks of 
inspiration and the plain of every-day life. . . . He was 
a strong thinker, who sometimes carried common-sense to a 
height where it catches the light of a diviner air, and warmed 
reason till it had well-nigh the illuminating property of intui- 
tion. He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and 
bluff heartiness of expression he takes rank with the best." — 
Lowell. 

" There is no fine power of dramatic story, no exquisite 
invention of character or circumstance, no truth to nature in 
ideal landscape : at the utmost, there is conventional dra- 
matic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery 
such as may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation." 
— David Mas son. 

" Nay, but he was a poet, an excellent poet — in marble ; 
and Phidias, with the sculpturesque ideal separated from his 
working tool, might have carved him. He was a poet with- 
out passion. . . . He thrust out nature with a fork. 
To be sure it was not necessary that John Dryden 
should keep a Bolingbroke to think for him : but to be sure 
again, it is something to be born with a heart, particularly 
for a poet. ' ' — Mrs. Browning. 

" He is, with all his variety of excellence, not often pa- 
thetic ; and had so little sensibility of effusions purely natural 
that he did not esteem them in others ; simplicity gave him 
no pleasure. " — Samuel Johnson. 

"Almost the only feature of the future Dryden which this 



DRYDEN 139 

production [' Lines on the Death of Lord Hastings '] dis- 
closes is his deficiency in sensibility or heart ; exciting as the 
occasion was, it does not contain an affecting line. 
Without either creative imagination or any power of pathos, 
he is in argument, in satire, and in declamatory magnificence, 
the greatest of our poets." — G. L. Craik. 

" He was a more vigorous thinker, a more correct and log- 
ical declaimer, and had more of what may be called strength 
of mind than Pope." — William Hazlitt. 

" His imagination was torpid until it was awakened by his 
judgment. . . . He sat down to work himself, by reflection 
and argument, into a deliberate wildness, a rational frenzy. 
No man exercised so much influence on the age. He was 
perhaps the greatest of those whom we have designated as the 
critical poets ; and his literary career exhibited, on a reduced 
scale, the whole history of the school to which he belonged. 
His command of language was immense. With him 
died the secret of the old poetical diction of England, the 
art of producing rich effects by familiar words. . . . His 
critical works are, beyond all comparison, superior to any 
which had, till then, appeared in England. . . . He began 
with. quaint parallels and empty mouthing. He gradually ac- 
quired the energy of the satirist, the gravity of the moralist, 
the rapture of the lyric poet. He was utterly destitute of 
the power of exhibiting real human beings." — Macaulay. 

" In literary criticism Dryden was himself the greatest 
authority of the period, and for many years it was in this 
form that he at once exercised himself and educated his age 
in the matter of prose writing." — George Saintsbury. 

11 His excellencies were those of the intellect and not of 
the spirit. Dryden's poetry . . . is of the very highest 
kind in its class. Wherever the pure intellect comes into 
play, there he is invariably excellent." — T. R. Lounsbury. 



140 DRYDEN 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



a 



The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground ; 
Cries ' Eureka ' the mighty secret's found : 
God is that spring of good, supreme and blest ; 
We, made to serve, and in that service blest; 
If so, some rules of worship must be given, 
Distributed to all alike by Heaven ; 
Else God were partial and to some denied 
The means His justice should for all provide." 

— Religio Laid. 



C( 



(( 



Yet 'tis our duty and our interest too, 
Such monuments as we can build to raise ; 
Lest all the world prevent what we should do, 
And claim a title in him by their praise. 

How shall I then begin or how conclude, 
To draw a fame so truly circular ? 
For in a round what order can be show'd, 
Where all the parts so equal perfect are ? " 

— Stanzas on the Death of Oliver CromwelL 

Farewell, too little and too lately known, 
Whom I began to think and call my own : 
For sure our souls were near allied, and thine 
Cast in the same poetic mould with mine, 
One common note on either lyre did strike 
And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike." 
— Lines to the Memory of His Friend, Mr. Oldham. 

2. Cool, Biting Satire. — "The prodigality of irony, 
the sting in the tail of every couplet, the ingenuity with 
which the odious charges are made against the victim, and 
above all the polish of the language and the verse and the 
tone of half-condescending banter, were things of which that 
time had had no experience. . . . There had been a con- 
tinuous tradition among satirists that they must affect im- 
mense moral indignation at the evils they attacked. . 



DRYDEN I41 

Now this moral indignation, apt to become rather tiresome 
when the subject is purely ethical, becomes quite intolerable 
when the subject is political. It never does for the political 
satirist to lose his temper and to rave and rant and denounce 
with the air of an inspired prophet. Dryden, and perhaps 
Dryden alone, has observed this rule. . . . His manner 
toward this subject is that of a cool, but not ill-humored scorn. 
His verse strides along with a careless Olympian 
motion, as if the writer were looking at his victims with a kind 
of good-humored scorn rather than with any elaborate triumph. 
Not only is there nothing better than Dryden's 
satirical and didactic poems of their own kind in English, but 
it may almost be said that there is nothing better in any 
other literary language. . . . There never was, perhaps, a 
satirist who less abused his power, for personal ends. The 
satire was as bitter as Butler's, but less grotesque and less 
labored. ' ' — George Saint sbury •. 

"His greatest power . . . was in satire — satire into 
which he formed his whole temperament, even more than 
the brilliancy of his mind, and which represents chiefly vehe- 
ment invective, as distinct from the sting and scintillation 
of the epigram and lampoon." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" That coolness of irony, that polished banter, which gave 
to Dryden his extraordinary influence as a satirist. It is as a 
satirist and pleader in verse that Dryden is best known, and 
as both he is in some respects unrivalled. His satire is not so 
sly as Chaucer's, but it is distinguished by the same good- 
nature. There is no malice in it." — Lowell. 

"The lofty and impassioned satire of Dryden, uniting the 
vehemence of anger with the self-control of conscious deter- 
mination, presents the finest example of that sort of voluntary 
emotion." — Hartley Coleridge. 

" His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful beyond any 
that has since been displayed. . . . The satirical powers 
of Dryden were of the highest order. . . . The models of 



142 DRYDEN 

satire afforded by Dryden, as they have never been equalled 
by any succeeding poet, were in a tone of excellence superior 
far to all that had preceded them. . . . He draws his 
arrow to the head and dismisses it straight upon the object of 
aim." — Sir Walter Scott. 

et As a satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. His ' Absalom and 
Achitophel' is the greatest satire of modern times. There 
is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets [in 
' Absalom and Achitophel '], a fearless choice of topics, of 
invective, which may be considered as the heroical in satire." 
— William Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Let him be gallows-free by my consent, 
And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant ; 
Hanging supposes human soul and reason ; 
This animal's below committing treason. 
Shall he be hanged who never could rebel ? 
That's a preferment to Achitophel. 



Railing in other men may be a crime, 
But ought to pass for mere instinct in him : 
Instinct he follows, and no further knows, 
For to write verse with him is to transpose." 

— Absalom and Achitophel. 

" All human things are subject to decay, 

And when fate summons, monarchs must obey, 
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young 
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long ; 
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute, 
Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute ; 
Worn out with business, did at length debate 
To settle the succession of the state ; 
And, pondering, which of all his sons was fit 
To reign, and wage immortal war with wit, 
Cried, "Tis resolved : for nature pleads that he 
Should only rule who most resembles me. 



DRYDEN 143 

Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, 
Mature in dulness from his early years : 
Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he, 
Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity. 
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
Strike through, and make a lucid interval ; 
But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray.' " 

— Mac Flecknoe. 

11 Power was his aim ; but, thrown from that pretence, 
The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence ; 
And malice reconciled him to his prince. 
Him in the anguish of his soul he served, 
Rewarded faster still than he deserved. 
Behold him now exalted into trust, 
His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just : 
Even in the most sincere advice he gave, 
He had a grudging still to be a knave. 
The frauds he learn'd in his fanatic years 
Make him uneasy in his lawful gears : 
At best as little honest as he could, 
And, like white witches, mischievously good." 

— The Medal. 

3. Metrical Skill. — "Whatever subjects employed his 
pen, he was still improving our measures and embellishing our 
language. Of Dryden's poems it was said by Pope that he 
could select from them better specimens of every mode of 
poetry than any other English writer could supply. Perhaps 
no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language 
with such a variety of models. To him we owe the im- 
provement, perhaps the completion of our metre." — Samue/ 
Johnson. 

" His versification flowed so easily as to lessen the bad ef- 
fects of rhyme in dialogue. . . . He had powers of versi- 
fication superior to those possessed by any other English 



144 DRYDEN 

author. . . . He first showed that the English language 
was capable of uniting smoothness and strength. He knew 
how to choose the flowing and sonorous words ; to vary the 
pauses and adjust the accents ; to diversify the cadence and 
yet preserve the smoothness of the metre. In lyrical poetry, 
Dryden must be allowed to have no equal. ' Alexander's 
Feast ' is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant 
department." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" What is of greatest importance to poetical students is to 
observe what progress Dryden made in the new prosody and 
how, by means of it, he drew out those qualities which had 
been too much neglected in the verse of the previous age — 
ease, intelligibility, and flexibility. . . . His fluency, 
his sustained power, the cogency and the lucidity of his logic, 
polished the surface of didactic and narrative poetry, which, 
until he came, had been rocky and irregular. - Dryden's com- 
mand over versification is shown in the prologues and epi- 
logues which he produced not merely for his own plays but for 
those of others. . . . Dryden was greatly Pope's su- 
perior as a craftsman in verse. Pope excelled only in the 
couplet, whereas Dryden was master of blank-verse also and 
of a greater variety of lyrical measure than is generally sup- 
posed. He attained full mastery over the balance of the 
iambic verse, so that the poet could rule the line and not the 
line carry him whither it would. He purified the national 
style to a very marked extent, freed it of uncouth and super- 
fluous ornament, and drew the parts of the language into 
harmonious relations with one another." — Edmund Gosse. 

" It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that 
could consist with it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the 
metrical utterance of weighty sentences, in the metrical con- 
duct of an argument, in vehement satirical invective, and in 
such passages of lyric passion as depend for their effect on 
rolling grandeur of sound, that he was prominently great." — 
David Masson. 



DRYDEN 145 

" Though contracted by habits of classical argument, 
though stiffened by controversy and polemics, though unable 
to create souls or depict artless and delicate sentiments, he 
is a genuine poet. He lived among great men and court- 
iers, in a society of artificial manners and measured language, 
but under his regular versification the artist's soul is brought to 
light." — Taine. 

" The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
The long majestic march and energy divine." — Pope. 

" In Dryden, the rhyme waits upon the thought. He 
knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to 
pentameter. " — Lowell. 

'* In the management of the heroic couplet Dryden has 
never been equalled. His versification sinks and swells in 
happy unison with the subject [' Absalom and Achitophel'] ; 
and his wealth of language seems to be unlimited. As a didac- 
tic poet he perhaps might, with care and meditation, have 
rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is the most brilliant 
and spirit-stirring. He is certainly the best writer of heroic 
rhyme in our language. The toughest and most knotted parts 
of the language became ductile at his touch. His versifica- 
tion, . . . while it gave the first model of that neatness 
and precision which the following generation esteemed so 
highly, exhibited, at the same time, the last example of noble- 
ness, freedom, variety of pause, and cadence." — Macanlay. 

" We shall hardly find one of the practitioners of the coup- 
let who is capable of such masterly treatment of the form, of 
giving to the phrase at once a turn so clear and so individual, 
of weighting the verse with such dignity and at the same time 
winging it with such a light-flying speed. . . . The 
versification of English satire before Dryden had been, al- 
most without exception, harsh and rugged. . . . But 
Dryden was in no such case. His native gifts and his 
enormous practice in play-writing had made the couplet as 
natural a vehicle to him for any form of discourse as blank 
10 



146 DRYDEN 

verse or plain prose. The form of it, too, which he had most 
affected was especially suited for satire. In versification the 
great achievement of Dryden was the alteration of what may 
be called the balance of the line, causing it to run more 
quickly and to strike its rhymes with a sharper and less pro- 
longed sound." — George Saintsbury. 

" The abounding sweep and resilient strength of his versi- 
fication form another of his prime excellencies, and he may 
almost be said to have remoulded the English heroic measure, 
puffing it out to excess, it should be admitted, with triple 
rhymes and rolling Alexandrines. ' Glorious John,' the mas- 
ter of the full-sounding line." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" He perfected by degrees his mastery of heroic verse, of 
which later he was to display the capabilities in a way that 
had never previously been seen and has never since been sur- 
passed. He imparted to the line [heroic verse] a variety, 
vigor, and sustained majesty of movement such as the verse in 
its modern form had never previously received." — -J. R. 
Lounsbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The soft complaining flute 
In dying notes discovers 
The woes of hopeless lovers, 
Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute. 

Sharp violins proclaim 
Their jealous pangs and desperation, 
Fury, frantic indignation, 
Depth of pains and heights of passion, 
For the fair, disdainful dame. 
But, oh ! what art can teach, 
What human voice can reach, 
The sacred organ's praise ? 
Notes inspiring holy love, 
Notes that wing their heavenly ways 
To mend the choirs above." 

— A Song for St. Cecilia's Day. 



DRYDEN I47 

u The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung, 
Of Bacchus— ever fair and ever young : 
The jolly god in triumph comes ; 
Sound the trumpets ; beat the drums : 
Flush'd with a purple grace 
He shows his honest face : 
Now give the hautboys breath. He comes ! he comes ! 
Bacchus ever fair and young, 
Drinking joys did first ordain ; 
Bacchus, blessings are a treasure, 
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure : 
Rich the treasure, 
Sweet the pleasure, 
Sweet is pleasure after pain." — Alexander's Feast. 

" High state and honours to others impart, 
But give me your heart : 
That treasure, treasure alone, 
I beg for my own. 
So gentle a love, so fervent a fire, 
My soul does inspire ; 
That treasure, that treasure alone 
I beg for my own. 

Your love let me crave ; 

Give me in possessing 

So matchless a blessing ; 
That empire is all I would have. 

Love's my petition, 

All my ambition ; 

If e'er you discover 

So faithful a lover, 

So real a flame, 

I'll die, I'll die, 

So give up my game." — The May Queen. 

4. Bold Personal Portraiture. — " Dryden made his 
poem [< Absalom and Achitophel '] little more than a string 
of such portraits, connected together by the very slenderest 
cord of narrative. . . . The strong antithesis [of his 



148 DRYDEN 

form] and smart telling hits lent themselves to personal de- 
scriptions and attack with consummate ease. . . . His 
figures are always at once types and individuals. It is to be 
noticed that, in drawing these satirical portraits, the poet has 
exercised a singular judgment in selecting his traits." — George 
Saintsbury. 

" Now and then, indeed, he seizes a very coarse and marked 
distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but a strong carica- 
ture, in which a single peculiarity is protruded and every- 
thing else is neglected ; like the Marquis of Granby at an 
inn-door, whom we know by nothing but his baldness ; or 
Wilkes, who is Wilkes only in his squint." — Macaulay. 

" The poem [' Absalom and Achitophel '] really consists of 
a set of satirical portraits, cut and polished like jewels and 
flashing malignant light from all their facets. . . . All 
these [sketches] were drawn at full length with a precision 
never approached by any of the popular ' character-makers ' 
of the preceding century, and in verse the like of which had 
never been heard in English for vigorous alternation of thrust 
and parry." — Edmund Gosse. 

"Instead of unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits 
which cannot be mistaken, however unfavorable ideas they 
may convey of the originals." — Sir Walter Scott. 

11 His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with 
great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may 
stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism ; exact 
without minuteness and lofty without exaggeration. 
In a few lines is exhibited a character so extensive in its com- 
prehension and so curious in its limitations that nothing can 
be added, diminished, or referred." — James Mitford. 

" The thing is to strike the nail on the head and hard, not 
gracefully. The public must recognize the character, shout 
their names as they recognize the portraits [in ' Absalom and 
Achitophel '], applaud the attacks which are made upon them, 
hurl them from the high rank which they covet." — Taine. 



DRYDEN 149 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, 
For here's a tun of midnight work to come, 
Og [Shadwell], from a treason tavern rolling home ; 
Round as a globe and liquored every chink, 
Goodly and great, he sails behind his link. 
With all this bulk, there's nothing lost in Og, 
For every inch that is not fool is rogue : 
A monstrous mass of foul, corrupted matter, 
As all the devils had spewed to make the batter." 

— Absalom and Achitophel. 

"A martial hero first, with early care, 

Blown, like the pigmy, by the wind to war. 

A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man : 

So young his hatred to his prince began. 

Next this (how wildly will ambition steer !) 

A vermin wriggling in the Usurper's ear, 

Bantering his venal wit for sums of gold, 

He cast himself into the saint-like mould, 

Groan'd, sigh'd, and pray'd, while godliness was gain, 

The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train." — The Medal. 

" Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ 

The ladies would mistake him for a wit ; 

And, when he sings, talks loud, and cocks would cry, 

I vow, methinks, he's pretty company : 

So brisk, so gay, so travell'd, so refined, 

As he took pains to graff upon his kind. 

True fops help nature's work, and go to school, 

To file and finish God Almighty's fool. 

Yet none Sir Fopling him or him can call ; 

He's knight o' the shire, and represents ye all. 

From each he meets he culls what'er he can ; 

Legion's his name, a people in a man." 

— Sir Fofling Flutter. 

5. Masculine Vigor — Incisiveness — Directness. — 

" He is the strongest poet of the age of prose, the most vig- 



I50 DRYDEN 

orous verse-man between Milton and Wordsworth. We may 
say that the muse of Dryden has a contralto and that of Pope 
a soprano voice." — Edmund Gosse. 

"There are passages in Dryden's satire in which every 
couplet has not only the force but the actual sound of a slap 
in the face. . . . Dryden had a great deal to say, and 
said it in the plain straightforward fashion which was of all 
things most likely to be useful for the formation of a work- 
manlike prose style in English. . . . His political and 
dramatic practice and the studies which that practice implied 
provided him with an ample vocabulary, a strong terse method 
of expression, and a dislike to archaism, vulgarity, or want of 
clearness. ' ' — George Saintsbury . 

" His words invariably go straight to the mark and not un- 
frequently with a directness and a force that fully merit the 
epithet of * burning ' applied to them by the poet Gray. . . . 
Dryden, who thought clearly and wrote forcibly, who knew 
always what he had to say and then said it with a directness 
and a power. ... So long as men continue to delight 
in vividness of expression, in majesty of numbers, and in mas- 
culine strength and all-abounding vigor, so long will Dryden 
continue to hold his present high place among English au- 
thors." — T. R. Lounsbury. 

" The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by 
masculine character. . . . The vigor and rapidity with 
which Dryden poured forth his animated satire plainly inti- 
mates that his mind was pleased with the exercise of that for- 
midable power. It was more easy for him to write with sever- 
ity than with forbearance." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" He writes boldly under the pressure of vehement ideas; 

he writes stirring airs, which shake all the senses, 

even if they do not sink deep into the heart. Such is his 

' Alexander's Feast,' ... an admirable trumpet-blast, 

a masterpiece of rapture and of art, which Victor 

Hugo alone has come up to." — Tame. 



DRYDEN 151 

" Robustness is the great characteristic of Dryden's poetry ; 
he is often excessive, but it is the excess of faculty not of en- 
deavor. Whatever he does is done with solidity and superior- 
ity; he dominates his subject and his reader, and effects this by 
the direct, unlabored expression of himself." — W. M. Rossetti. 

"He is rather an energetic than a feeling writer. He has very 
little heart and a great deal of nerve." — Hartley Coleridge. 

" He was thoroughly manly." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But thou [Shaftesbury], the pander of the people's hearts, 
O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts, 

What curses on thy blasted name will fall ! 

Which age to age their legacy shall call : 

For all must curse the woes that must descend on all. 

Religion thou hast none : thy mercury 

Has passed through every sect, and theirs through thee. 

But what thou giv'st, that venom still remains, 

And the poxed nation feel thee in their brains." 

— A Satire against Sedition. 

11 Without a vision poets can foreshow 

What all but fools by common-sense may know: 
If true succession from our isle should fail, 
And crowds profane with impious arm prevail, 
Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage, 
Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage, 
With which thou flatterest thy decrepit age. 
The swelling poison of the several sects 
Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects, 
Shall burst its bag ; and, fighting out their way, 
The various venoms on each other prey. 
The presbyter, pufFd up with spiritual pride, 
Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride : 
His brethren damn,. the civil power defy, 
And parcel out republic prelacy." 

— A Satire against Sedition. 



152 DRYDEN 

" Protect us, mighty Providence, 
What would these madmen have ? 
First, they would bribe us without pence, 
Deceive us without common-sense, 
And without power enslave. 
Shall free-born men, in humble awe, 
Submit to servile shame ; 
Who from consent and custom draw 
The same right to be ruled by law, 
Which kings pretend to reign ? " 

— On the Young Statesman. 

6. Point. — " He has antithesis, ornamental epithets, 
finely wrought comparisons, and all the artifices of the liter- 
ary mind. . . . He contrasts ideas with ideas, phrases 
with phrases. . . . Closer ideas, more marked contrasts, 
bolder images, only add weight to the argument. . . 
He has vigorous periods, reflective antithesis." — Taine. 

" The flippant extravagance of point and quibble in which, 
complying with his age, he had hitherto indulged." — Sir 
Walter Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" From hence began that plot, the nation's curse, 
Bad in itself, but represented worse ; 
Raised in extremes and in extremes decried ; 
With oaths affirm'd, with dying vows denied ; 
Not weigh'd nor winnow'd by the multitude ; 
But swallow'd in the mass, unchew'd and crude. 
Some truth there was, but dash'd and brew'd with lies, 
To please the fools and puzzle all the wise. 
Succeeding times did equal folly call, 
Believing nothing or believing all." 

— Absalom and Achitophel. 

" Unblamed for life, ambition set aside, 

Not stain'd with cruelty, not pufT'd with pride. 

How happy had he been if destiny 

Had higher placed his birth or not so high ! 



DRYDEN 153 

His kingly virtues might have gain'd a throne, 
And bless'd all other countries but his own. 
But charming greatness, since so few refuse 
'Tis juster to lament him than accuse." 

— Absalom and Achitophel. 

" Thine be the laurel then; thy blooming age 
Can best, if any can, support the stage ; 
Which so declines that shortly we may see 
Players and plays reduced to second infancy. 
Sharp to the world but thoughtless of renown, 
They plot not on the stage but on the town, 
And, in despair their empty pit to fill, 
Set up some foreign monster in a bill. 
Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving, 
And murdering plays, which they miscall reviving." 

— Epistle to Mr. Granville. 

7. Specious Argument in Verse.— " Dryden had a 
faculty of specious argument in verse which, if it falls short of 
the great Roman's [Lucretius] in logical exactitude, hardly 
falls short of it in poetical ornament, and excels it in a sort of 
triumphant vivacity which hurries the reader along whether he 
will or no. . . . Dryden's didactic poems are quite un- 
like anything which came before them, and have never been 
approached by anything that has come after them. Doubtless 
they prove nothing ; but at the same time they have 

a remarkable air of proving something. He was at all times 
singularly happy and fertile in the art of illustration and of 
concealing the weakness of an argument in the most convinc- 
ing way by a happy smile or jest. A poet whose greatest tri- 
umphs were won in the fields of satire and of argumentative 
verse, Dryden had, in reality, a considerable touch of the 
scholastic in his mind." — Geerge Saintsbury. 

"If he took up an opinion in the morning, he would have 
found so many arguments for it by night that it would seem 
already old and familiar. . . . But the charm of this great 
advocate is that, whatever side he was on, he could always find 



1 54 DRYDEN 

reasons for it and state them with great force and with abun- 
dance of happy illustration. . . . It is Dryden's excuse 
that his characteristic excellence is to argue persuasively and 
powerfully, whether in verse or in prose, and that he was 
amply endowed with the most needful quality of an advocate 
— to be strongly and wholly of his present way of thinking, 
whatever it might be. One of the great charms of 

his best writing is that everything seems struck off at a heat, 
as by a superior man in the best mood of his talk." — Lowell. 

" The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems 
to have been the power of reasoning and expressing the result 
in appropriate language. . . . The skill with which they 
[his arguments] are stated, elucidated, enforced, and exem- 
plified ever commands our admiration, though in the result 
our reason may reject their influence. . . . His argu- 
ments, even in the worst cause, bear witness to the energy of 
his mental conceptions." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse. 
His logic is by no means uniformly sound. . . . His 
arguments, therefore, often are worthless, but the manner in 
which they are stated is beyond all praise." — Macaulay. 

"He could not restrain himself from argument and satire 
on a subject th^would have induced most youthful poets to 
luxuriate in elegiac complaints." — -James Mitfo?'d. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" If, then, our faith we for our guide admit, 
Vain is the further search of human wit, 
As when the building gains a surer stay, 
We take the unuseful scaffolding away. 
Reason by sense no more can understand ; 
The game is played into another hand ; 
Why choose we then, like bilanders, to creep 
Along the coast, and land in view to keep, 
When safely we may launch into the deep ? " 

— The Hind and the Panther. 



DRYDEN 155 

" For granting we have sinn'd, and that the offence 
Of man is made against Omnipotence, 
Some price that bears proportion must be paid, 
And infinite with infinite be weigh'd. 
See, then, the Deist lost : remorse for vice 
Not paid, or paid inadequate to price : 
What farther means can Reason now direct, 
Or what relief from human wit expect ? 
That shows us sick ; and sadly are we sure 
Still to be sick, till Heaven reveal the cure : 
If then Heaven's will must needs be understood, 
(Which must, if we want cure, and Heaven be good), 
Let all records of will revealed be shown ; 
With Scripture all in equal balance thrown, 
And our one sacred book will be that one." 

— Religio Laid. 

" If those who gave the sceptre could not tie 
By their own deed their own posterity, 
How then could Adam bind his future race ? 
How could his forfeit on mankind take place ? 
Or how could heavenly justice damn us all, 
Who ne'er consented to our father's fall? 
Then kings are slaves to those whom they command, 
And tenants to their people's pleasure stand. 
Add, that the power for propertv allow'd 
Is mischievously seated in the crowd ; 
For who can be secure of private right, 
If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might ? " 

— Absalom and Achitophel. 

8. Excessive Panegyric — Adulation— Bombast. — 

" He had a tendency to bombast, which, though subsequently 
corrected by time and thought, was never wholly removed. 
No writer, it must be owned, has carried the flattery of dedi- 
cation to a greater length. . . . But this was not, we 
suspect, merely interested servility : it was the overflowing of 
a mind singularly disposed to admiration^— of a mind which 
diminished vices and magnified virtues and obligations. 



156 DRYDEN 

Bombast is his prevailing vice — the exaggeration which dis- 
figures the panegyrics of Dryden." — Macau/ay. 

" He seems to have made flattery too cheap. . . . He 
appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his 
expense, however lavish. . . . The extreme flattery of 
Dryden's dedications has been objected to as a fault of an op- 
posite description ; and perhaps no writer has equalled him in 
the profusion and elegance of his adulation. . . . He 
considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage, and 
brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift. ... In the 
meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not 
whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were 
deified, he has ever been equalled, except by Afra Behn in an 
address to Eleanor Gwyn." — Samuel Johnson. 

" Dryden was one of the most accomplished flatterers that 
ever lived." — George Saintsbury. 

"Although it ['Tyrannic Love '] is perhaps his best heroic 
play, it errs on the side of rant and bombast to such a degree 
that the poet felt obliged to apologize for this in the pro- 
logue. — Edmund Gosse. 

"Here lovers vie with each other in metaphors; there a 
lover, in order to magnify the beauty of his mistress, says that 
bloody hearts lie panting in her hands." — Taine. 

" Perhaps no writer has equalled him in the profusion and 
elegance of his adulation." — Sir Walter Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Next to the sacred temple you are led, 

Where waits a crown for your most sacred head : 
How justly from the Church that crown is due, 
Preserved from ruin, and restored by you ! 
The grateful choir their harmony employ, 
Not to make greater but more solemn joy. 
Wrapt soft and warm, your name is sent on high, 
As flames do on the wings of insects fly : 



DRYDEN 157 

Music herself is lost ; in vain she brings 
Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings : 
Her melting strains in you a tomb have found, 
And lie like bees in their own sweetness drown'd. 
He that brought peace, all discord could atone, 
His name is music of itself alone." 

— To Charles the Second. 

11 When factious rage to cruel exile drove 
The queen of beauty and the court of love, 
The muses drooped with their forsaken arts, 
And the sad cupids broke their useless darts : 

But now the illustrious nymph, returned again, 
Brings every grace triumphant in her train. 
The wond'ring Nereids, though they raised no storm, 
Foreslow'd her passage, to behold her form : 
Some cried, ' A Venus ! ' some, ' A Thetis pass'd ! ' 
But this was not so fair nor that so chaste." 

— To the Duchess of York on Her Return. 

" Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain 
Oft strive, by art though further'd, to obtain. 
His body was an orb, his sublime soul 
Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole : 
Whose regular motions better to our view, 
Than Archimedes' sphere, the heavens did shew. 
Graces and virtues, languages and arts, 
Beauty and learning fill'd up all the parts. 
Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear 
Scatter'd in others ; all, as in their sphere. 
Were fix'd conglobate in his soul ; and thence 
Shone through his body, with sweet influence ; 
Letting their glories so on each one fall, 
The whole frame rendered was celestial." 

— The Death of Lord Hastings. 

9. Coarseness — Sensuality. — Dryden has been uni- 
versally condemned for pandering to the depraved tastes of 



158 DRYDEN 

the age and court. While his later and better work is less 
open to the charge of coarseness, yet some of it, like the 
second part of "Absalom and Achitophel," contains, as 
Saintsbury says, " some of his greatest licenses of expres- 
sion." 

" The license of his comedy . . . had for it only 
the apology of universal example, and must be lamented 
though not excused. . . . Dryden's indelicacy is like 
the forced impudence of a bashful man." — Sir Walter 
Scott. 

" The characters in Dryden's plays are nothing but gross, 
selfish, unblushing, lying libertines of both sexes. 
The comic characters are, without mixture, loathsome and 
despicable. " — Macaulay. 

" He squatted clumsily in the filth in which others simply 
sported. . . . He made himself petulant of set purpose. 
Nothing is more nauseous than studied lewdness, and Dryden 
studied everything, even pleasantness and politeness." — 
Taine. 

" His works afford too many examples of dissolute licen- 
tiousness and abject adulation; but they were probably like 
his merriment, artificial and constrained — the effects of study 
and meditation, and his trade rather than his pleasure. Of 
the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately 
pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake, of spreading 
the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal nor excuse the 
depravity. Such degradation of genius, such abuse of super 
lative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and in- 
dignation. ' ' — Samuel Johnson. 

" The coarseness of Dryden's plays is unpardonable. 
It is deliberate, it is unnecessary, it is a positive 
defect in art." — George Saintsbury. 

" Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest 
it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were 
themselves brutal." — Lowell. 



DRYDEN 159 

Those who care to seek illustrations of Dry den's coarseness 
will find striking instances in his "Absalom and Achitophel," 
Book I., lines 1 to 10, and Book II., lines 467 to 480, in his 
11 Epistle to Mr. Southern," and in his extant plays. 

10. Pedantry — Vanity. — If Dryden mostly wanted that 
inspiration which comes of belief in and devotion to some- 
thing nobler and more abiding than the present moment and 
its petulant need, he had at least the next best thing to that 
— a thorough faith in himself. . . . He is always hand- 
somely frank in telling us whatever of his own doing pleased 
him." — Lowell. 

" He never forgets that, as Matthew Arnold has said, he 
is the puissant and glorious founder of our excellent and indis- 
pensable eighteenth century — that is to say, of an age of 
prose and reason." — Edmund Gosse. 

" Certainly ' modest ' and 'diffident' are not exactly the 
adjectives for those qualities which one discerns as uppermost 
in the writings, verse and prose, of 'Glorious John,' the master 
of the ' full-resounding ' line. . . . There is a great deal 
of self-assertion and an overbearing contempt and brow-beat- 
ing of other men, their persons, intellect, performances, and 
opinions." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" He descends to display his knowledge with pedantic 
ostentation. . . . His vanity now and then betrays his 
ignorance. . . . He had a vanity unworthy of his abili- 
ties, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the company 
with whom he lived, by the use of French words which had 
then crept into conversation. . . . His faults of negli- 
gence are beyond recital. What he thought sufficient he did 
not stop to make better, and allowed himself to leave many 
parts unfinished, in confidence that his good lines would 
overbalance the bad." — Samuel Johnson. 

"And so he translated Virgil not only into English but 
into Dryden ; and so he was kind enough to translate Chaucer 



l6o DRYDEN 

too, as an example, . . . and cheated the readers of the 
old 'Knight's Tale' of sundry of their tears." — Mrs. 
Browning. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Let this suffice : nor thou, great saint, refuse 
This humble tribute of no vulgar muse ; 
Who, not by cares or wants or age depress'd, 
Stems a wild deluge with a dauntless breast ; 
And dares to sing thy praises in a clime 
Where vice triumphs, and virtue is a crime ; 
Where even to draw the picture of thy mind 
Is satire on the most of human kind : 
Take it, while yet 'tis praise ; before my rage, 
Unsafely just, break loose on this bad age ; 
So bad that thou thyself hadst no defence 
From vice but barely by departing hence." — Eleonora. 

11 Our author, by experience, finds it true, 
'Tis much more hard to please himself than you : 
And out of no feign'd modesty, this day 
Damns his laborious trifle of a play : 
Not that it's worse than what before he writ ; 
But he has now another taste of wit ; 
And, to confess a truth, though out of time, 
Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. 
Passions too fierce to be in fetters bound, 
And nature flies him like enchanted ground : 
What verse can do, he has performed in this, 
Which he presumes the most correct of his ; 
But spite of all his pride, a secret shame 
Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name." 

— Prologue to Aurengzebe. 

" Dulness is decent in the church and state. 
But I forget that still 't is understood, 
Bad plays are best described by showing good. 
Sit silent then, that my pleased soul may see 
A judging audience once, and worthy me ; 



DRYDEN l6l 

My faithful scene from true records shall tell, 
How Trojan valour did the Greek excel ; 
Your great forefathers shall their fame regain, 
And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain." 

— Prologue to Troilus and Cressida. 

ii. Precision — Mastery of Language. — "He had, 
beyond most, the gift of the right word. And if he does not, 
like one or two of the great masters of song, stir one's sympa- 
thies by that indefinable aroma so magical in arousing the 
subtle associations of the soul, he has this in common with 
the few great writers, the winged seeds of his thoughts embed 
themselves in the memory and germinate there. . . . But 
his strong sense, his command of the happy word, his wit, 
which is distinguished by a certain breadth and, as it were, 
power of generalization, as Pope's by keenness of edge and 
point, were his whether he would or no. . . . Pithy 
sentences and phrases always drop from Dryden's pen as if 
unawares. ' ' — Lowell. 

" He was the first writer under whose skillful management 
the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. 
— Macau lay. 

" No English poet, perhaps no English writer, has attained 
as regards expression such undisputed excellence." — -James 
Mitford. 

" Great Dryden next whose tuneful muse affords 
The sweetest numbers and the fittest words." — Addison. 

" Dryden purifies his own [style] and renders it more clear 
by introducing close reasoning and precise words. 
He bounds it [his thought] with exact terms justified by the 
dictionary, with simple constructions justified by the gram- 
mar, that the reader may have at every step a method of veri- 
fication and a source of clearness. " — Taine. 

"The felicity of his language, the richness of his illustra- 
tions, and the depth of his reflections, often supplied what 
the scene wanted in natural passion." — Sir Walter Scott. 
ii 



l62 DRYDEN 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Three poets in three distant ages born 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd ; 
The next in majesty ; in both the last. 
The force of nature could no further go ; 
To make a third she join'd the former two." 

— Under the Portrait of John Milton. 



u 



Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease, 

No action leave to busy chronicles : 

Such, whose supine felicity but makes 

In story chasms, in epoch mistakes ; 

O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down, 

Till with his silent sickle they are mown." 

— Astrcea Redux. 

'* Whatever happy region is thy place, 
Cease thy celestial song a little space ; 
Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, 
Since heaven's eternal year is thine. 
Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, 
In no ignoble verse ; 

But such as thy own voice did practise here, 
When thy first fruits of poesy were given ; 
To make thyself a welcome inmate there : 
While yet a young probationer, 
And candidate of heaven." 

— An Ode to Mrs. Anne Killi^rew. 



POPE, 1688-1744 

Biographical Outline. — Alexander Pope, born in Lom- 
bard Street, London, May 21, 1688 ; father a Roman Cath- 
olic linen draper, in comfortable circumstances, who lived, 
after 1700, at Binfield in Windsor Forest; Pope is a preco- 
cious child, and is nicknamed " the little nightingale " because 
of the sweetness of his voice ; in his eighth year he begins 
Latin and Greek with a priest as tutor, and in his ninth year 
he enters a Roman Catholic school at Twyford, near Win- 
chester ; later he attends school at Marylebone and at Hyde 
Park Corner ; he was remembered at Twyford because he was 
once whipped for satirizing the master; in his eleventh year 
a severe illness, brought on "by perpetual application," ruins 
his health and distorts his figure ; after a few months at 
school he returns to his father's home, and is placed for a 
time under another priest-tutor, but is soon left to pursue his 
studies entirely by himself ; he reads voraciously and, accord- 
ing to his own statement, studies Greek, Latin, French, Ital- 
ian, and the English poets with as much zest as " a boy gath- 
ering flowers ; " he begins early to imitate his favorite authors, 
and in his twelfth year makes " a kind of play " from Olgiby's 
translation of Homer, which is acted by his school-fellows ; 
he "does nothing but read and write ; " during 1701-1703 
he writes an epic poem entitled "Alexander," which he 
burns in 171 7, with Atterbury's approval ; about 1702 (when 
he is but fourteen) he makes also a translation from Statins, 
which he published in 17 12 ; during his boyhood he also 
makes several other translations from the classics and from 
Chaucer. 

In his fifteenth year he goes to London to study French 

163 



i 64 pope 

and Italian, but too severe application brings on an illness 
nearly fatal ; he regains health through daily rides, and early 
begins to court the acquaintance of men of letters, who gen- 
erally receive him with encouragement ; he is especially 
aided by Sir William Trumbull, William Walsh, and Wych- 
erley ; he writes his "Pastorals" before he is eighteen, and 
publishes one of them in 1706, at the request of Tonson ; he 
is much influenced by Wycherley, eighteen years his senior, 
whom Pope says he followed about " like a dog ; " he becomes 
first known to the literary world in general through the publi- 
cation of his " Pastorals "in 1709; these are favorably received, 
and in May, 171 1, he publishes, anonymously, his " Essay on 
Criticism ; " the " Essay " is satirized by Dennis, but is praised 
by Addison, whom Pope soon afterward meets through the 
good offices of Steele, already an acquaintance of Pope's ; his 
"Messiah " is first published May 14, 171 2, in the Spectator ; 
during the same year his " Rape of the Lock " and some of 
his minor poems appear in the " Miscellanies," published by 
Lintot ; "The Rape of the Lock" is warmly praised by 
Addison, and is revised, greatly enlarged, and published by it- 
self in 1714, adding much to Pope's reputation. 

In March, 1712-13, he publishes his "Cooper's Hill," 
partly written during boyhood, which, by its political charac- 
ter, wins for Pope the friendship of Swift ; he also writes the 
prologue for Addison's " Cato," which was produced April 13, 
1 7 13, but, through literary intrigues most discreditable to Pope, 
his friendliness toward Addison is soon turned into hatred; 
about this time he is introduced by Swift to Arbuthnot, and 
with these two and Gay, Parnell, Congreve, and others, he 
helps to form the famous " Scriblerus Club; " in October, 
1 7 13, after encouragement by Addison, Swift, and many 
others, Pope publishes proposals for a translation of Homer's 
"Iliad;" the proposal is received with enthusiasm by both 
Whig and Tory writers, and the first four books of Pope's 
" Iliad " appear in 1 7 1 5 ; other volumes follow in 17 16, 1717, 



POPE 165 

1 7 18, and two in 1720 ; all six volumes are sold for a guinea 
each, and the first edition brings to Pope the unprecedented 
sum of ,£5,000, thus making him financially independent for 
life ; a contemporary translation of the first book of the 
" Iliad " by Tickell is attributed by Pope to Addison, and this 
probably gave rise to Pope's stricture on his former friend 
ending with the famous couplet, 

" Who but must laugh if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? " 

By the time of the publication of the sixth volume of his 
" Iliad," Pope had become acknowledged as the leader among 
Englishmen of letters then living; although his Greek schol- 
arship was known to be somewhat superficial, his literary and 
financial success gave him high social rank, and he became a 
welcome guest at many noble houses; in April, 17 16, his 
father's family leave Binfield and settle in Chiswick, near 
many of Pope's aristocratic friends; his father dies in 1717, 
and in 17 19 Pope buys the lease of a house with five acres of 
land at Twickenham, where he resides during the rest of his 
life ; he invests in the famous South Sea scheme, sells out be- 
fore the collapse, and makes some money by the speculation ; 
about 1 7 19 he begins his famous correspondence with Lady 
Mary Wortley Montague and Martha Blount, both of whom 
had great influence on Pope's life ; the popular report of his 
love-affair, based on his "Lines to an Unfortunate Lady " 
(published with other poems in 17 17), is now known to have 
been entirely unfounded ; the volume published in 171 7 con- 
tained his " Eloisa and Abelard " and his "Ode on St. 
Cecilia's Day; " in 1722 occurs his famous and bitter quarrel 
with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who then lived near him 
at Twickenham — a quarrel supposed to have grown out of 
contempt manifested by the lady* toward Pope after a supposed 
declaration of love on his part ; his relations with Martha 



166 pope 

and Teresa Blount, his friends and neighbors, continued for 
years, and seem to have been purely platonic. 

In 1722 Pope edits the poems of Parnell, and begins for 
Tonson an edition of Shakespeare, which is published in 1725 
with little success; about 1724 Pope begins his translation of 
the " Odyssey," aided by William Broome and by Elijah Fen- 
ton, who translates twelve of the twenty-four books ; three 
volumes of the " Odyssey " were published in 1725, and two 
more in 1727, the whole bringing to Pope about ^3,800 ; a 
bitter quarrel results with Broome, who was dissatisfied with 
his share of the profits, and who was later attacked by Pope in 
his " Bathos;" in 1725, when Bolingbroke returns from 
exile, he settles at Danley, near Twickenham, and renews his 
intimacy with Pope ; in the summer of 1726 Swift visits Lon- 
don on Pope's invitation, and Pope arranges for the publica- 
tion of " Gulliver's Travels ; " about this time Bolingbroke, 
Arbuthnot, Lord Oxford, Swift, and Pope unite in writing 
three volumes of " Miscellanies," two volumes of which were 
published in June, 1727 ; Swift is Pope's guest again in 
1727 ; the third volume of the " Miscellanies " is published 
in March, 1727-28, and contains Pope's satire "Bathos; " 
it is supposed that Pope intended in " Bathos " to irritate 
the future victims of his " Dunciad " into retorts, and the 
satire had that effect; the " Dunciad " appeared May 28, 
1728, and was published anonymously, purporting to have 
been addressed to a friend of Pope's in answer to the attacks 
provoked by " Bathos ; " a second edition of the " Dunciad " 
appeared in 1729, but the poem was not acknowledged till it 
appeared among Pope's works in 1735. 

Stung by the retorts of the victims of the "Dunciad," 
Pope founds, anonymously, the Grub Street Journal, and 
continues it until 1737 ; he is induced to withdraw from this 
dirty warfare by Bolingbroke, whom he reverenced, and to- 
gether they plan an elaborate series of poems ; the result is 
Pope's " Essay on Man " and his " Moral Essays; " the first 



POPE 167 

of the "Moral Essays" — that on Taste — was published in 
1 73 1, and the second — on Riches — and third — on the Charac- 
ters of Men — in 1733 ; the fourth — on the Characters of 
Women — was written as early as 1733, but was not published 
till 1735 ; the first part of the " Essay on Man " appeared in 
1733 and the second in 1734, both anonymously; Boling- 
broke is supposed to have supplied "the philosophic stamina " 
of the " Essay on Man ; " the " Universal Prayer " was add- 
ed to the "Essay" in 1738; at Bolingbroke's suggestion, 
in 1733, Pope translates the first Satire of the second Book of 
Horace " in a morning or two," and it is published soon af- 
terward ; a gross insult to Lady Mary Wortley Montague con- 
tained in the satire leads to another bitter quarrel between 
Pope and her friends, and results in Pope's famous " Letter to 
a Noble Lord " (suppressed during his life) and in his "Epis- 
tle to Arbuthnot," published in January, 1734-35, which is 
now regarded as Pope's masterpiece ; after a series of most 
elaborate and contemptible manoeuvres on his part, Pope's cor- 
respondence is published in May, 1737, and the imaginary 
correspondence there attributed to Addison, Steele, and Con- 
greve produces for years in the public mind the utmost con- 
fusion as to the relations of these four men of letters ; Pope's 
deception in this whole matter was accidentally discovered 
over a century later ; the publication of Pope's letter to Swift, 
in 1 741, was the outcome of a still more disgusting intrigue 
on Pope's part, in which he had multiplied falsehood upon 
falsehood; his changing political opinions at this period are 
portrayed in his " Epistle to Augustus," which was published 
in March, 1737 ; he had been visited by the Prince of Wales 
two years before, and his two dialogues, called eventually 
" Epilogues to the Satires,"' published in 1738, were written 
in answer to an attack on the Government. 

After Bolingbroke retired to France in 1736, his place as 
Mentor to Pope was taken by Warburton, who had defended 
Pope in a series of letters replying to strictures upon the 



168 pope 

*< Essay on Man;" Pope and Warburton visit Oxford to- 
gether in 1 741, and the degree of D.C.L. is offered to Pope, 
but he declines it because a proposed D.D. is refused to War- 
burton ; at Warburton's suggestion Pope now undertakes to 
complete the " Dunciad " with a fourth book, which is pub- 
lished in March, 1742 ; it is not received with favor, and a 
criticism of it by Colley Cibber in his " Rehearsal " leads to 
another bitter personal quarrel ; a complete edition of the 
"Dunciad," with notes by Warburton, was published in 1742, 
and contained several changes, including the substitution of 
Cibber for Theobald as the hero of the poem and the attack 
on Bentley ; Pope spends much of his time during his last 
three years in visiting at country-houses ; he revises his works, 
and again entertains Bolingbroke at Twickenham ; he dies at 
Twickenham, May 30, 1744, and is buried in Twickenham 
church ; to Martha Blount, who had been attentive to his 
comfort till the last, he leaves ^1,000 and the income from 
his property during her life. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON POPE. 

Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnams, 1 : 94- 

137. 
Hazlitt, Wm., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 

94-108. 
St. Beuve, C. A., "English Portraits." New York, 1875, Holt, 277- 

305- 
De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, 4:237-288; 

11 : 21-35 ana " 51—156. 
Birrell, A., " Obiter Dicta." New York, 1887, 2 : 52-109. 
Kingsley, C, " Literary and General Lectures." New York, 1890, 

Macmillan, 71-78. 
Gosse, E., "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." New York, 

1889, Macmillan, 105-134. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 

1 : 303-321. 
Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

4:i-58- 



POPE 169 

Browning, E. B., "Essays on the Poets." New York, 1863, Miller, 

201-207. 
Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of the Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 109- 

134. 
Tuckerman, H. T., " Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, Fran- 
cis, 73-83- 
Dennis, J., "Studies in English Literature." London, 1876, Stamford, 

1-76. 
Howitt, Win,, "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge. 
Dawson, G. , "Biographical Lectures." London, 1886, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 225-235. 
Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 

Green, & Co., 40-47. 
Hannay, J., " Satires and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 151- 

158. 
Phillips, M. G., "A Manual of English Literature." New York, 1893, 

Harper, I : 453"499- 
Nicoll, H. J., " Landmarks of English Literature." New York, 1883, 

Appleton, 185-194. 
Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Holt, 374-388. 
Oliphant, Mrs., "Sketches of the Reign of George II." Edinburgh, 

1859, Blackwood, 263-323. 
Stephen, L., " English Men of Letters." New York, 1880, Harper, v. 

index. 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets," (Pattison). New York, 1881, Mac- 

millan. 
Warton, J., "The Genius and Writings of Pope." London, 1806, 

Maiden, 2 vols. 
Williams, H., " English Letters." London, 1886, Bell, I : 275-348. 
Johnson, S., " Lives of the Poets " (Arnold). New York, 1889, Holt, 

327-455- 

Dial (Chicago), 22 : 245-246 (E. E. Hale, Jr.). 

Southern Literary Messenger, 6 : 713-716 (H. T. Tuckerman). 

Cornhill Magazine, 28 : 583-604 (L. Stephen). 

Blackwood 's Magazine, 57 : 369-400 (J. Wilson). 

Fraser's Magazine, 48 : 452-466 (C. Kingsley) : 83 : 284-301 (L. Ste- 
phen). 

Taifs Magazine, 18 : 407- (T. De Quincey). 

North American Review, 13 : 450-473 (W. H. Prescott) ; 112 : 178-217 
(J. R. Lowell). 



1 70 POPE 

Scribner's Magazine, 3 : 533~550 (A. Dobson). 

Macmillan's Magazine, 58:385-392 (W. Minto) ; 61:176-185 (W. 
Minto). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Conciseness — Terseness — Exactness. — " I 

chose verse," says Pope in his ' Design of an Essay on Man,' 
" because I could express them [ideas] more shortly this way 
than in prose itself." 

" If the ideas are mediocre, the art of expressing them is 
truly marvellous. . . . Every word is effective ; every 
passage must be read slowly ; every epithet is an epitome ; a 
more condensed style was never written. . . . Never 
was familiar knowledge expressed in words more effective, in 
style more condensed, in melody more sweet, in contrasts 
more striking, in embellishments more blazing. [His style 
is characterized as] refined, ornate, antithetical, pointed, 
terse, regular, graceful, musical." — Taine. 

" One can open upon wit and epigram at any page. In- 
deed, I think that one gets a little tired of the invariable this 
set off by the inevitable that, and wishes antithesis would let 
him have a little quiet now and then. ... In all of these 
[quotations] we notice that terseness in which (regard being 
had to his especial range of thought) Pope has never been 
excelled. . . . The ' Essay on Man ' proves only two 
things beyond a question — that Pope was not a great thinker 
and that, wherever he found a thought, no matter what, he 
could express it so tersely, so clearly, and with such smooth- 
ness of versification, as to give it everlasting currency. . . . 
The accuracy on which Pope prided himself, and for which 
he is commended, was not accuracy of thought so much as of 
expression. ' ' — Lowell. 

"There is something charming even to an enemy's ear in 
this exquisite balancing of sounds and phrases, these 'shining 
rows' of oppositions and appositions, this glorifying of com- 



POPE 171 

monplaces by antithetic processes, this catching in the re- 
bound, of emphasis upon rhyme and rhyme; all, in short, of 
this Indian jugglery and Indian carving upon cherry-stones! " 
— Mrs. Browning. 

"Pope has regularly crowded the utmost thought into the 
smallest space. This is the principle of his method. How 
many judicious and pointed remarks, eternally true, do I 
glean when reading his works, and how they are expressed in 
a brief, concise, elegant manner, once for all ! " — St. Beuve. 

"The charm of Pope's best passages, when it does not 
rest upon his Dutch picturesqueness of touch, is due to the 
intellectual pleasure given by his adroit and stimulating man- 
ner of producing his ideas and by the astonishing exactitude 
and propriety of his phrase. When it is all summed up, we 
may not be much wiser, but we are sure to be much the 
brighter and alerter." — Edmund Gosse. 

" The portraits in Pope's 'Essay on Man' are masterpieces 
of English versification, medals cut with such sharp outlines 
and such vigor of hand that they have lost none of their 
freshness by lapse of time. . . . Pope's wit is of that 
perfect kind which does not seem to be sought for its own 
sake but to be the appropriate vehicle for the meaning. We 
are not made to feel that he is constraining himself to write in 
couplets, but that his couplets are the shape in which he can 
best make his thoughts tell." — Mark Pattison. 

" When Pope is at his best every word tells. His precision 
and firmness of touch enable him to get the greatest possible 
meaning into a narrow compass." — Leslie Stephen. 

" He examined lines and words with minute and punctili- 
ous observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable 
diligence, till he had nothing left to be forgiven. 
The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his 
sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that 
study might produce or chance might supply." — Samuel 
Johnson. 



172 POPE 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue, 
Still out of reach, yet never out of view ; 
Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most, 
To covet flying and regret when lost : 

See how the world its veterans rewards ! 
A youth of frolics, an old age of cards ; 
Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, 
Young without lovers, old without a friend ; 
A fop their passion, but their prize a sot." 

— The Rape of the Lock. 

Great Nature spoke ; observant men obey'd ; 

Cities were built, societies were made : 

Here rose a little state ; another near 

Grew by like means, and join'd through love or fear. 

Did here the trees with ruddier burthens bend, 

And there the streams in purer rills descend ? 

What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, 

And he returned a friend, who came a foe. 

Converse and love, mankind may strongly draw, 

When love was liberty, and nature law. 

Thus states were formed ; the name of king unknown, 

Till common interest placed the sway in one. 

'Twas VIRTUE ONLY (or in arts or arms, 

Diffusing blessings, or averting harms), 

The same which in a sire the sons obey'd, 

A prince the father of a people made." 

— Essay on Man. 



a 



Happy the man whose wish and care 

A few paternal acres bound, 
Content to breathe his native air 

In his own ground. 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 

Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter fire. 



POPE 173 

Blest, who can unconcern'dly find 
Hours days and years slide soft away 

In health of body, peace of mind, 
Quiet by day." — Ode on Solitude. 

2. Point — Balance — Epigram.— " The antitheses fol- 
low each other in couples like a succession of columns ; 
thirteen couples form a suite ; and the last is raised above 
the rest by a word, which concentrates and combines all." — 
Taine. 

" Pope must be allowed to have established a style of his 
own, in which he is without a rival. ... In other hands 
this prolongation of the same form is tame; in Pope's it in- 
terests us, so much variety is there in the arrangement and 
the adornments. In one place the antithesis is comprised in 
a single line, in another it occupies two ; now it is in the 
substantives, now in the adjectives and verbs ; now only in 
the ideas ; now it penetrates the sound and position of the 
words. In vain we see it reappear ; we are not wearied, 
because each time it adds somewhat to our idea, and shows 
us the object in a new light." — Lowell. 

"The ' Essay on Criticism' is like a metrical multiplica- 
tion table. It required very little reading of the French text- 
books to find the maxims which Pope has here strung together. 
But he has dressed them so neatly and turned them out with 
such sparkle and point that these truisms have acquired a 
weight not their own." — De Quincey. 

" They [the artificial poets] could not mean greatly, but 
such meaning as they had they labored to express in the most 
terse and pointed form which our language is capable of. I\ 
not poets, they were literary artists. They showed that a 
couplet can do the work of a page and a single line produce 
effects which, in the infancy of writing, would require sen- 
tences." — Mark Pattison. 



174 pope 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" See the same man, in vigour, in the gout ; 
Alone, in company ; in place, or out ; 
Early at business, and at hazard late ; 
Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate ; 
Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball ; 
Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall." 

— Moral Essays. 

'* But where's the man who counsel can bestow, 
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know ? 
Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite ; 
Not dully prepossessed, not blindly right ; 
Though learn'd, well-bred ; and though well-bred, sincere ; 
Modestly bold, and humanly severe ; 
Who to a friend his faults can freely show, 
And gladly praise the merit of a foe ? 
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined ; 
A knowledge both of books and human kind." 

— Essay on Criticism. 

11 Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; 
In wit a man, simplicity, a child ; 
With native humour tempering virtuous rage, 
Form'd to delight at once and lash the age. 
Above temptation, in a low estate, 
And uncorrupted even among the great : 
A safe companion, and an easy friend, 
Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end." 

— Epitaph on Gay. 

3. Melody. — " In two directions, in that of condensing 
and pointing his meaning and in that of drawing the utmost 
harmony of sound out of the couplet, Pope carried versifica- 
tion far beyond the point at which it was when he took it up. 
Because, after Pope, this trick of versification became com- 
mon property, and ' every warbler had his tune by heart,' we 



POPE 175 

are apt to overlook the merit of the first invention. 
We have [in the quotation below] twenty-four lines (eleven in 
the Greek) of finished versification, the rapid, facile, and me- 
lodious flow of which, concentrating all the felicities of Pope's 
higher style, has never been surpassed in English poetry." — 
Mark Pattison. 

" The troops, exulting, sat in order round, 
And beaming fires illumined all the ground. 
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, 
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; 
Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, 
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
And tip with silver every mountain's head." 

— Translation of the Iliad. 
"To Pope the English language will always be indebted. 
He, more than any other before or since, discovered its power 
of melody, enriched it with poetical elegances, with happy 
combinations. ' ' — Taine. 

" Again, your verse is orderly — and more — 
1 The waves behind impel the waves before;' 
Monotonously musical they glide, 
Till couplet unto couplet hath replied." 

— Andrew Lang. 
" He gave the most striking examples of his favorite theory, 
that 'sound should seem an echo to the sense.' He carried 
out the improvement in diction which Dryden commenced : 
and while Addison was producing beautiful specimens ol re- 
formed prose, Pope gave a polish and point to verse before 
unknown." — H. T. Tuckerman. 



1 76 POPE 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



a 



Now under hanging mountains, 
Beside the falls of fountains, 
Or where Hebrus wanders, 
Rolling in meanders, 
All alone, 

Unheard, unknown, 
He makes his moan ; 
And calls her ghost, 
For ever, ever, ever lost ! 
Now with furies surrounded, 
Despairing, confounded, 
He trembles, he glows, 
Amidst Rhodope's snows: 
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies ; 
Hark ! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries 

Ah see, he dies !" 

— Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 

" Hark ! they whisper ; angels say, 
' Sister spirit, come away ! ' 
What is this absorbs me quite ? 
Steals my senses, shuts my sight, 
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? 
Tell me, my soul, can this be death ? 

The world recedes, it disappears ! 
Heaven opens on my eyes ! my ears 

With sounds seraphic ring : 
Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly ! 
O Grave ! where is thy victory ? 

O Death ! where is thy sting ? " 

— The Dying Christian to His Soul. 

" But now secure the painted vessel glides, 
The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides 
While melting music steals upon the sky, 
And soften'd sounds along the waters die ; 



POPE 177 

Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, 
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay — 
All but the sylph ; with careful thoughts opprest, 
The impending woe sat heavy on his breast. 
He summons straight his denizens of air ; 
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair : 
Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, 
That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath." 

— The Rape of the Lock. 

4. Artificiality. — " Dryden and Pope are the great mas- 
ters of the artificial style of poetry in our language. . 
If, indeed, by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost 
grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to 
the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great 
poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay 
the clean contrary way : namely, in representing things as 
they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice 
and passion, as in his Critical Essays ; or in representing them 
in the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as 
in his Satires ; or in clothing the little with mock dignity, as 
in his poems of Fancy ; or in adorning the trivial incidents 
and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of ex- 
pression. . . . He was not distinguished as a poet of 
lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate 
sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the 
workings of the heart; but he was a wit and a critic, a man 
of sense, of observation, and of the world, with a keen relish 
for the elegances of art, ... a quick tact for propriety 
of thought and manners as established by the forms and cus- 
toms of society. . He was, in a word, the poet, not 
of nature, but of art. . He saw nature only dressed 
by art ; he judged of beauty by fashion ; he sought for truth in 
the opinions of the world ; he judged of the feelings of others 
by his own. . . . Pope's muse never wandered with safety 
but from his library to his grotto or from his grotto into his li- 
12 



178 POPE 

brary back again. . . . He could describe the faultless, 
whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better than 
the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven, 
a piece of cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brill- 
iance and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the 
sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than 
with the ' pale reflex of Cynthia's brow.' . . . That 
which was nearest to him was the greatest : the fashion of the 
day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. 

His mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; 
its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the 
enthusiasm of poetry ; he was in poetry what the skeptic is in 
religion. . . . For rocks and seas and mountains he gives 
us artificial grass-plats, gravel walks, and tinkling rills : for 
earth-quakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot or the 
fall of a china jar. " — William Hazlitt. 

" I admire Pope in the very highest degree ; but I admire 
him as a pyrotechnic artist for producing brilliant and evanes- 
cent effects out of elements that have hardly a moment's life 
within them. There is a flash and a startling explosion ; then 
there is a dazzling coruscation ; all purple and gold ; the 
eye aches under the suddenness of a display that, springing 
like a burning arrow out of darkness, rushes back into dark- 
ness with arrowy speed, and in a moment all is over. 
But Pope was all jets and tongues of flame ; all showers of scin- 
tillation and sparkle. . . . To Pope we owe it that we 
can now claim a . pre-eminence in the sportive and 

aerial graces of the mock-heroic and satiric muse." — De 
Quincey. 

" As truly as Shakespeare is the poet of man as God made 
him, dealing with great passions and innate motives, so truly 
is Pope the poet of society, the delineator of manners, the ex- 
poser of those motives which may be called acquired, whose 
spring is in institutions and habits of purely worldly origin. 

Pope's style is the apotheosis of clearness, point, 



POPE 179 

technical skill, or the ease that comes of practice, not of the 
fulness of original power. . . . He stands for exactness of 
intellectual expression, for perfect propriety of phrase (I speak 
of him at his best), and is a striking instance how much suc- 
cess and permanence of reputation depend on conscientious 
finish as well as on native endowment. . . . But the 
defect of this kind of criticism was that it ignored imagination 
altogether, and sent Nature about her business as an imperti- 
nent baggage, whose household loom competed unlawfully 
with the machine-made fabrics, so exquisitely uniform in 
pattern, of the royal manufactories. . . . Even poor old 
Dennis himself had arrived at a kind of muddled notion that 
artifice was not precisely art, that there were depths in human 
nature which the most perfectly manufactured line of five feet 
could not sound." — Lowell. 

" He has no romance, no spirituality, no mystery, and the 
highest regions of poetry he never so much as dreams of; but 
in the lower regions there is perhaps no single writer who 
showers fine things about him with such a prodigality of wit, 
or dazzles us so much with the mere exercise of his intelli- 
gence." — Edmund Gosse. 

"Pope has no dash, no naturalness or manliness; he has 
no more ideas than passions — at least such ideas as a man feels 
it necessary to write, and in connection with which we lose 
thought of words. Religious controversy and party quarrels re- 
sound about him ; he studiously avoids them ; amidst all these 
shocks his chief care is to preserve his writing-desk. 
In reality he did not write because he thought, but thought 
in order to write; manuscript, and the noise it makes in the 
world when printed, was his idol ; if he wrote verses, it was 
merely for the sake of doing so. The last scene [of 

the ' Dunciad '] ends with noise, cymbals and trombones, 
crackers and fire- works. As for me, I carry away from this 
celebrated entertainment only the remembrance of a hubbub. 
Unwittingly I have counted the lights, I know the machinery, 



l8o POPE 

I have touched the toilsome stage-property of apparitions 
and allegories. I bid farewell to the scene-painter, the 
machinist, the manager of literary effects, and go elsewhere 
to find the poet. . . . Pope's most perfect poems are 
those made up of precepts and arguments. Artifice in these is 
less shocking than elsewhere. ... A great writer is a 
man who, having passions, knows his dictionary and his gram- 
mar; Pope thoroughly knew his dictionary and his grammar, 
but stopped there. . . . The most correct and formal of 
men. . . . These caricatures seem strange to us, but do 
not amuse. The wit is no wit: all is calculated, combined, 
artificially prepared." — Taine. 

" Pope's muse had left the free forest for Will's coffee- 
house, and haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of 
the enchanted island. Her wings were clogged with ' gums 
and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' had shrunk « like a 
rivel'd flower.' . . . Nature has, for him, ceased to be 
inhabited by sylphs and fairies, except to amuse the fancies of 
fine ladies and gentlemen, and has not yet received a new in- 
terest from the fairy tales of science. . . . Pope always 
resembles an orator whose gestures are studied, and who 
thinks while he is speaking of the fall of his robes and the 
attitude of his hand. He is throughout academical ; and 
though knowing with admirable nicety how grief should 
be represented, and what have been the expedients of his 
best predecessors, he misses the one essential touch of spon- 
taneous impulse. . . . The fragments cohere by exter- 
nal cement, not by an internal unity of thought." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

'* Of the ' wild benefit of nature ' Pope had small notion. 
Of that indescribable something, that ' greatness ' 
which causes Dryden to uplift a lofty head from the deep pit 
of his corruption, neither Pope's character nor his style bears 
any trace. A cleverer fellow than Pope never com- 

menced author. He was, in his own mundane way, as de- 



POPE 181 

termined to be a poet, and the best going, as John Milton 
himself. He took pains to be splendid — he polished and 
pruned. His first draft never reached the printer — though he 
sometimes said it did." — Augustine Birrell. 

" There are no pictures of nature or of simple emotion in 
all his writings. He is the poet of town life and of high 
life and of literary life, and seems so much afraid of incurring 
ridicule by the display of feeling or unregulated fancy that it 
is not difficult to believe that he would have thought such 
ridicule well directed." — Francis Jeffrey. 

" The fact is that, in a very artificial age (and such was 
the age of Pope), an artificial poet is the highest poet attain- 
able ; his very artificiality of matter and style is his authenti- 
cation as poet. . . . The only condition, then, on which 
we can have real poets in an artificial age is that they should 
be in a measure artificial ; on that condition we can have 
them, and in Pope England had one truly super-eminent." — 
W. M. Rossetti. 

"The taste of Pope was evidently artificial to the last de- 
gree. He delighted in a grotto decked out with looking- 
glasses and colored stones as much as Wordsworth in a 
mountain path, or Scott in a border antiquity. The ' Rape 
of the Lock ' is considered his most characteristic production, 
and abounds with brilliant fancy and striking invention. But 
to what is it devoted? The celebration of a trivial incident 
in fashionable life. Its inspiration is not of the grove, but of 
the boudoir. It is not bright with the radiance of truth, but 
with the polish of art. It breathes not the fragrance of wild 
flowers, but the fumes of tea. It displays not the simple 
features of nature, but the paraphernalia of the toilet." — 
H. T. Tucker man. 

" Pope's ' Messiah ' reads to us like a sickly paraphrase, in 
which all the majesty of the original is dissipated. ' Right- 
eousness ' becomes 'dewy nectar;' 'sheep' are 'the fleecy 
care ; ' the call to Jerusalem to ' arise and shine ' is turned 



182 POPE 

into an invocation to ' exalt her tow'ry head.' The ' fir tree 
and box tree' of Isaiah are ' the spiry fir and shapely box.' " 
— Mark Pattison. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, 
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; 
On shining altars of Japan they raise 
The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : 
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
While China's earth receives the smoking tide." 

— The Rape of the Lock. 

11 Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn ! 
Oh spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born ! 
See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, 
With all the incense of the breathing spring : 
See lofty Lebanon his head advance, 
See nodding forests on the mountains dance : 
See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise, 
And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies ! 
Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers ; 
Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears : 
A God, a God! the vocal hills reply, 
The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. 
Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies ! " 

— Messiah. 

" Thou, too, great father of the British floods ! 
With joyful pride survey'st our lofty woods ; 
Where towering oaks their growing honours rear, 
And future navies on thy shores appear, 
Not Neptune's self from all her streams receives 
A wealthier tribute than to thine he gives. 
No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear, 
No lake so gentle and no spring so clear. 
Nor Po so swells the fabling poet's lays, 
While led along the skies his current strays, 
As thine, which visits Windsor's famed abodes, 
To grace the mansion of our earthly gods : 



POPE 183 

Nor all his stars above a lustre show 
Like the bright beauties on thy banks below ; 
Where Jove, subdued by mortal passion still, 
Might change Olympus for a nobler hill." 

— Windsor Forest. 

5. Vivid Portraiture — Individuality. — " He did in 

some inadequate sense hold up the mirror to nature. 
It was a mirror in a drawing-room, but it gave back a faithful 
image of society, powdered and rouged, to be sure, and in 
tent on trifles, yet still as human in its own way as the heroes 
of Homer in theirs." — Lowell. 

" There is a kind [of writing] in which he succeeds. 
His descriptive and oratorical talents find in portraiture mat- 
ter which suits them. . . . Several of his portraits are 
medals worthy of finding a place in the cabinets of the curious 
and of remaining in the archives of the human race; when he 
chisels one of these heads, the comprehensive images, the un- 
looked-for connections of words, the sustained and multiplied 
contrasts, the perpetual and extraordinary conciseness, the 
incessant and increasing impulse of all the strokes of eloquence 
brought to bear upon the same spot, stamp upon the memory 
an impress which we never forget." — Laine. 

"Like all the greatest poets, Pope is individual and local. 
He can paint with his full power only what he sees. 
He can pick out all the flaws, all the stains, combine them 
effectively, and present them as a picture of the man. To 
his portraits none can deny a certain likeness." — Mark Patti 
son. 

"Each of these descriptions [of Addison and others] is, 
indeed, a masterpiece in its way ; the language is inimitably 
clear and pointed." — Leslie Stephen. 



1 84 POPE 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere, 
In action faithful, and in honour clear ! 
Who broke no promise, served no private end, 
Who gained no title, and who lost no friend ; 
Ennobled by himself, by all approved, 
Praised, wept, and honour'd by the muse he loved." 

— On James Craggs, Esq. 

" Go ! fair example of untainted youth, 
Of modest wisdom and pacific truth : 
Composed in sufferings and in joy sedate, 
Good without noise, without pretension great, 
Just of thy word, in every thought sincere, 
Who knew no wish but what the world might hear. 
Of softest manners, unaffected mind, 
Lover of peace, and friend of humankind : 
Go live ! for Heaven's eternal year is thine, 
Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine." — To Robert Digby. 

6. Meanness — Coarseness — Malignity. — " The 

1 Dunciad ' is a personal satire, or lampoon, directed against 
the small authors of the day, who are bespattered with much 
mud and little wit, without any pretense of disguise and under 
their own names . . . — an amalgam of dirt, ribaldry, and 
petty spite. . . . And against whom is this petty irrita- 
tion felt ? Against feeble journalists, brutal pamphleteers, 
starving rhymesters, and a crew of hackney authors, bohemians 
of ink and paper below literature. To sting and wound these 
unfortunates gave Pope pleasure as he sate, meditating stabs, 
in his elegant villa, the resort of the rich and the noble ! By 
attacking these, he lowers himself to their level. The first 
poet of the age — of the century — chooses to hand himself 
down to posterity as bandying scurrilities with the meanest 
scribblers, hired defamers, the banditti of the printing-office, 
ready at the shortest notice to deliver half a crown's worth of 



POPE 185 

slander. . . . His more elaborate portraits are so many 
virulent and abusive lampoons. In his savage assaults on 
Lady Mary Wortley Montague and on old Lord Hervey, he 
passed the bounds of the rules of decorum recognized, not to 
say in refined but in decent society. His verses on Addison 
violate only truth and good feeling. But it is not only in his 
individual portraits that he is carried beyond the bounds of 
civility, his whole satire is pitched in a key which good taste 
is compelled to disown. It is trenchant and direct. It is 
not merely caustic, it is venomous. It betrays a spiteful pur- 
pose in the satirist. . . . Pope was conscious of a talent 
for caustic effects, conscious that he could do better than any- 
one what every one else was doing — sting with epigram. 

He was capable of the malice which thirsts for leav- 
ing wounds. All those bitter couplets were not impulse or 
fashion but meditated stabs of personal vengeance. 
For all outside his own circle he has nothing but bitterness. 

He fell furiously upon the trade of authorship, 
treated poverty as a vice, and descends even to contrast his 
own ' poetic dignity and ease ' with the raggedness and din- 
nerlessness of the sons of rhyme. The ' Dunciad ' is wholly 
inspired by this animosity against needy authors. 
Pope too often allows the personal grudge to be seen through 
the surface of public police which he puts on his work. 
But the thin disguise of offended virtue is too often a cloak for 
revenge. His most pungent verses can always be referred back 
to some personal cause of affront. . . He knowingly 

threw away fame to indulge his piques." — Mark Pattison. 

"In his lifetime ' the wasp of Twickenham' could sting 
through a sevenfold covering of pride or stupidity. . ... 
We have to add all the cases in which Pope attacked his 
enemies under feigned names, and then disavowed his attacks. 

He is the man distinguished beyond all other writ- 
ers for the bitterness of his resentment against all small critics; 
who disfigures his best poems by his petty vengeance for old 



1 86 pope 

attacks. . . . The ' Dunciad,' indeed, is, beyond all 
question, full of coarse abuse. The second book, in particu- 
lar, illustrates that strange delight in the physically disgusting 
which Johnson notices as characteristic of Pope and his 
master, Swift." — Leslie Stephen. 

" However great his merit in expression, I think it impossi- 
ble that a true poet could have written such a satire as the 
' Dunciad,' which is even nastier than it is witty. It is filthy 
even in a filthy age, and Swift himself could not have gone 
beyond some parts of it. One's mind needs to be sprinkled 
with some disinfecting fluid after reading it." — Lowell. 

"The 'Dunciad,' in which he endeavored to sink into 
contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked and 
some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves 
. The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope. 
He expected that everything should give way to his 
ease or humour; as a child, whose parents will not hear her 
cry, has an unresisted dominion in the nursery. . . . He 
was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be 
capriciously resentful. . . . Pope and Swift had an 
unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every 
other tongue utters with unwillingness and of which every ear 
shrinks from mention." — Samuel Johnson. 

li Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the 
wound and then languish away, Pope felt greatly exhausted 
by the efforts connected with the * Dunciad.' . . . Pope, 
besides that the basis of his ridicule is continually too narrow, 
local, and casual, is rank to utter corruption with a disease 
far deeper than false refinement or conventionalism." — De 
Qutncey. 

"It is not unfitting that so quarrelsome a man as Pope 
should have been the occasion of so much quarrelsomeness in 
others. . . . The age was a scandalous, ill-living age, 
and Pope, who was a most confirmed gossip and tale-bearer, 
picked up all that was going. ... If the historian or 



POPE 187 

the moralist seeks an illustration of the coarseness and brutal- 
ity of their style [the small writers of Pope's day], he finds it 
only too easily, not in the works of the dead dunces, but in 
the pages of their persecutor. . . . Pope had none of 
the grave purpose which makes us, at all events, partially 
sympathize with Ben Jonson in his quarrels with the poet- 
asters of his day. It is a mere toss-up whose name you may 
find in the ' Dunciad ' — a miserable scribbler's or a resplen- 
dent scholar's ; a tasteless critic's or an immortal wit's. A 
satirist who places Richard Bentley and Daniel Defoe 
amongst the dunces must be content to abate his pretensions 
to be regarded as a social purge. . . . . Pope greatly 
enjoyed the fear he excited. . . . Many men must 
have been glad when they read in their scanty journals that 
Mr. Pope lay dead in his villa at Twickenham. They 
breathed the easier for the news. Personal satire may be a 
legitimate but it is an ugly weapon. . . . His ' Eloisa' 
is marred by a most unfeeling coarseness." — Augustine 
Birrell. 

" He could breathe only in an atmosphere of intrigue, and 
the physical excitement of anger was the keenest pleasure his 
nerves could enjoy. . . . Since the publication of the 
Caryll correspondence Pope stands revealed, beyond any 
hope of justification, as an unscrupulous and intriguing trick' 
ster. ' ' — Edmund Gosse. 

tl He was as crafty and malignant as a nervous abortion, 
which he was. When he wanted anything he dared not ask 
for it plainly ; with hints and contrivances of speech he 
induced people to mention it, to bring it forward, after which 
he would make use of it. . . He had an ugly liking for 

artifice, and played a disloyal trick on Lord Bolingbroke, his 
greatest friend. . . He had all the appetite and whims 

of an old child, an old invalid, an old author, an old bache- 
lor. . . These villainies, this foul linen, the greasy 
coat six years old, the musty pudding, and the rest, are to be 



188 pope 

found in Pope as in Hogarth, with English coarseness and 
precision. This is their error ; they are realists, even under 
the classical wig ; they do not disguise what is ugly and mean ; 
they describe that ugliness and meanness with their exact 
outlines and distinguishing marks. . . . This is the 
reason why their satires are so harsh. . . . Seldom has 
so much talent been expended to produce so much ennui." — 
Taine. 

" The Wicked Wasp of Twickenham." — Lady Mary Wort- 
ley Montagu. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Though Artemisia [Queen Caroline] talks by fits 
Of councils, classics, fathers, wits, 
Reads Malebranche, Boyle, and Locke : 

Yet in some things methinks she fails — 
'Twere well if she would pare her nails 

And wear a cleaner smock. 

Haughty and huge as High-Dutch bride, 

Such nastiness and so much pride 

Are oddly joined by fate : 

On her large squab you find her spread, 

Like a fat corpse upon a bed, 

That lies and stinks in state." — Artemisia. 

" Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings [Lord HerveyJ, 
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings ; 
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, 
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : 
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, 
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. 
Whether in florid impotence he speaks, 
And as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks, 
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, 
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad. 
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, 



POPE 189 

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies, 
His wit all see-saw, between that and this ; 
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, 
And he himself one vile antithesis." 

— Prologue to the Satires. 

"Avert it, Heaven! that thou, my Cibber, e'er 
Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair ! 
Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, 
The needy poet sticks to all he meets, 
Coach'd, carted, trod upon ; now loose, now fast, 
And carried off in some dog's tail at last. 
Happier thy fortunes ! like a rolling stone, 
Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on." 

— The Dunciad. 

7. Vanity — Insincerity. — " After all, his great cause 
for writing was literary vanity : he wished to be admired, and 
nothing more ; his life was that of a coquette studying herself 
in a glass, painting her face, smirking, receiving compliments 
from anyone, yet declaring that compliments weary her, that 
paint makes her dirty, and that she has a horror of affecta- 
tion. . . . He was never frank, always acting a part ; he 
aped the blase man, the impartial great artist ; a contemner 
of the great, of kings, of poetry itself. . . . When we 
read his correspondence we find that there are not more than 
ten genuine letters. ... It seems that this kind of 
talent is made for light verses. . . . To make pretty 
speeches, to prattle with the ladies, to speak elegantly of their 
chocolate or their fan, to jeer at fools, to criticise the last 
tragedy, to be good at insipid compliments or epigrams — this, 
it seems, is the natural employment of a mind such as this, 
but slightly impassioned, very vain, a perfect master of style, 
as careful of his verses as a dandy of his coat." — Taine. 

" Pope was through his life ambitious of splendid acquaint- 
ance. ... In his character may be discovered an appe- 
tite to talk too frequently of his own virtues. ... It 



190 POPE 

may be discovered that when he thinks himself concealed he 
indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs 
in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. 
Pope had been flattered until he thought himself one of the 
moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of lay- 
ing down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and im- 
plored ; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they 
went away and laughed. . . . Pope may be said to write 
always with his reputation in his head. . . . Next to the 
pleasure of contemplating his possessions seems to be that of 
enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquaint- 
ed, and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have obtained 
by any practices of meanness or servility ; a boast which was 
never denied to be true. . . . It is evident that his own 
importance swells often in his mind. . . . One of his 
favorite topics is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it 
had been real, he would deserve no commendation : and in 
this he was certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself 
was sufficiently observed ; and of what could he be proud but 
of his poetry? . . . He pretends insensibility to censure 
and criticism, though it was observed by all who knew him 
that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet, and that his extreme 
irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation ; but he wished 
to despise his critics, and therefore hoped that he did despise 
them. . . . Pope was sufficiently a fool to fame, and his 
fault was that he pretended to neglect it. . . . His scorn 
of the great is too often repeated to be real ; as no man thinks 
much of that which he despises ; and as falsehood is always in 
danger of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time 
that he lives among them. . . . When Pope murmurs at 
the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when he speaks 
of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with 
negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his habit- 
ual and settled sentiments, but either wilfully disguises his own 
character, or, what is more likely, invests himself with tempo- 



POPE I9I 

rary qualities, and sallies out in the colors of the present mo- 
ment. " — Samuel Johnson. 

tl Recent investigations have strengthened those suspicions 
of his honesty which were common even among his contempo- 
raries. . . . Speaking bluntly, indeed, .... we ad- 
mit that Pope was, in a small way, one of the most consummate 
liars that ever lived. . . . Pope's delight in artifice was 
something unparalleled. . . . Our pleasure in reading 
him is much counterbalanced by the suspicion that those 
pointed aphorisms which he turns out in so admirably polished 
a form may come only from the lips. . . . Thus we are 
always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable misgivings. 
We don't know what comes from the heart and what from the 
lips : when the real man is speaking, and when we are listen- 
ing only to the old commonplaces skilfully vamped. 
One can hardly help smiling at his praises of his own hospi- 
tality. . . . How far he succeeded in imposing upon 
himself is, indeed, a very curious question, which can never 
be fully answered. There is the strangest mixture of honesty 
and hypocrisy. . . . He would instinctively snatch at a 
lie even when a moment's reflection would have shown that 
the plain truth would be more convenient, and therefore he 
had to accumulate lie upon lie, each intended to patch up 
some previous blunder." — Leslie Stephen. 

" Pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little 
finessing ; which is the chief foible of his character. 
What quality of thinking must that be [speaking of Pope's] 
which allies itself so naturally with distortions of fact or of 
philosophic truth ? . Pope, having no such internal 

principle of wrath boiling in his breast, . . . was una- 
voidably a hypocrite of the first magnitude when he affected 
himself . . . to be in a dreadful passion with offenders 
in a body. It provokes fits of laughter, in a man who knows 
Pope's real nature, to watch him in the process of braving the 
storm that spontaneously will not come, whistling like a mari- 



192 POPE 

ner for a wind to fill his satiric sails, and pumping up into his 
face hideous grimaces in order to appear convulsed with his- 
trionic rage. Pope should have been counseled never to write 
satire except on those evenings when he was suffering horribly 
from indigestion. By this means the indignation would have 
been ready-made. The rancor against all mankind would 
have been sincere, and there would have needed to be no extra 
expense in getting up steam. As it is, the short puffs of anger, 
the uneasy snorts of fury, in Pope's satires give one painfully 
the idea of a locomotive engine with unsound lungs. 
Sudden collapses of the manufactured wrath, sudden oblivion 
of the criminal, announce that Pope's passion is always coun- 
terfeit. . . . Truth, even of the most appreciable order, 
truth of history, goes to wreck continually under the perversi- 
ties Pope's satire applied to celebrated men ; and as to the 
higher truth of philosophy, it was still less likely to survive 
amongst the struggles for striking effects and startling con- 
trasts. . . . The key to his failure throughout this whole 
satire section [satires on woman] ... is simply that not 
one word is spoken in sincerity of heart or with any vestige 
of self-belief. . . . The malignity [against women] was 
not real — as indeed nothing was real — but a condiment for 
hiding insipidity. . . . Pope, in too many instances, for 
the sake of some momentary and farcical effect, deliberately 
assumes the license of a liar. He adopts the language of moral 
indignation where we know that it could not possibly have 
existed, seeing that the story to which this pretended indig- 
nation is attached was, to Pope's knowledge, a pure fabrica- 
tion. . . . That Pope killed himself by potted lampreys 
. I greatly doubt ; but if anything inclines me to be- 
lieve it, chiefly it is the fury of his invectives against epicures 
and gluttons. What most of all he attacked as a moralist was 
the particular vice which most of all besieged him. 
He writes with a showy air of disparaging riches, of doing 
homage to private worth, of honoring patriotism, and so on 



POPE 193 

through all the commonplaces of creditable morality. But, 
in the midst of this surface display, and in defiance of his 
ostentatious pretensions, Pope is not in any deep or sincere 
sense a moral thinker ; and in his own heart there was a mis- 
giving, not to be silenced, that he was not. . . . Here, 
however [in his satires and moral epistles], most eminently it 
is that the falseness and hypocrisy which besieged his literary 
career have made themselves manifest. . . . Pope, in the 
midst of actual fidelity to his church, was at heart a traitor — - 
in the very oath of his allegiance to his spiritual mistress he 
had a lie upon his lips, scoffed at her whilst kneeling in hom- 
age to her pretensions, and secretly foreswore her doctrines 
whilst suffering insults in her service. . . . But upon far 
more subjects than this Pope was habitually false in the qual- 
ity of his thoughts, always insincere, never by any accident 
in earnest, and consequently many times caught in ruinous 
self-contradiction. . . . But if the reader is shocked with 
Pope's false reading of phenomena where not the circum- 
stances so much as the construction may be challenged, what 
must he think of those cases in which downright facts and in- 
cidents the most notorious have been outrageously falsified 
only in obedience to a vulgar craving for effect in the dramatic 
situations, or by way of pointing a moral for the stimulation 
of torpid sensibilities? . . . [In describing the death of 
the Duke of Buckingham.] But Pope was at his wit's end for 
a striking falsehood. He needed for a momentary effect some 
tale of a great lord, once fabulously rich, who had not left 
himself the price of a halter or of a pauper's bed. And thus, 
for the sake of extorting a stare of wonderment from a mob of 
gaping readers he did not scruple to give birth and currency 
to the grossest of legendary fables. . . . Such shame 
[from personal falsehoods] would settle upon every page of 
Pope's satires and moral epistles, oftentimes upon every coup- 
let, if any censor, armed with an adequate knowledge of the 
facts, were to prosecute the inquest. And the general impres- 
13 



194 pope 

sion from such an inquest would be that Pope never delineated 
a character nor uttered a sentiment nor breathed an aspiration 
which he would not willingly have recast, have retracted, have 
abjured or trampled under foot with the curses assigned to 
heresy, if by such an act he could have added a hue of brill- 
iancy to his coloring or a new depth to his shadows. There 
is nothing he would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn 
of his opinions nor the most pathetic memorial from his per- 
sonal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration — 
which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. 

Simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a 
sincere thought or a sincere emotion. . . . And he was 
evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as 
one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference 
between what people affected to call falsehood and what they 
affected to call truth. . . . To look at a pale, dejected fel- 
low-creature creeping along the highway and to have reason 
for thinking that he has not tasted food since yesterday 

in Pope, left to his spontaneous nature, such a sight 
and such a thought would have moved only fits of laughter. 
. Still, he was aware that some caution was requisite in 
giving public expression to such feelings. Accordingly, when 
he came forward in gala dress as a philosopher, he assumed the 
serene air of one upon whom all such idle distinctions as rich 
and poor were literally thrown away. . . . To a just ap- 
preciation of Pope's falseness, levity, and self-contradiction it 
is almost essential that a reader should have studied him with 
the purpose of becoming his editor." — De Quincey. 

" Pope seems to refine them [his satirical portraits] in his 
own mind and to make them out just what he pleases, till 
they are not real characters but the mere drivelling effusions 
of his spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing and then 
goes on describing his own description till he loses himself in 
verbal repetitions." — William Hazlitt. 



POPE 195 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Well, if it be my time to quit the stage, 
Adieu to all the follies of the age ! 
I die in charity with fool and knave, 
Secure of peace at least beyond the grave. 
I've had my purgatory here betimes, 
And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes. 

With foolish pride my heart was never fired, 

Nor the vain itch to admire or be admired ; 

I hoped for no commission from his grace ; 

I bought no benefice, I begged no place." — Satires. 

" Friend to my life ! (which did not you prolong, 
The world had wanted many an idle song). 
What drop or nostrum can this plague remove ? 
Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love ? 
A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped, 
If foes, they write — if friends, they read me dead. 
Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I ! 
Who can't be silent, and who will not lie." 

— Prologue to the Satires. 

" From me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny, 
Manilius or Solimus shall supply : 
For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek, 
I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek. 
In ancient sense if any needs will deal, 
Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal ; 
What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before, 
Or chewed my blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er 
The critic eye, that microscope of wit, 
Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit." 

— The Dunciad. 

" Heroes and kings ! your distance keep : 
In peace let one poor poet sleep, 
Who never flattered folks like you : 
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too." 

— For One Who Would Not be Buried 
in Westminster Abbey. 



196 POPE 

8. Elegance — Brilliance— Gracefulness. — " Pope is 
the incarnation of the literary spirit. He is the most com- 
plete representative in our language of the intellectual in- 
stincts which find their natural expression in pure literature. 
. . . He was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his 
own department." — Leslie Stephen. 

" Within his narrow circle how much, and that how ex- 
quisite, was contained ! What discrimination, what wit, 
what delicacy, what fancy, what elegance of thought ! . . . 
The ' Rape of the Lock ' is the most exquisite specimen of 
filigree work ever invented." — William Hazlitt. 

" What grace, what taste, what promptitude in feeling, 
how much justness and what perfection did he show in ex- 
pressing himself ! . . . We see . . . what care and 
what elegance he introduced into his varied epistolary inter- 
course." — St. Beuve. 

11 The ' Rape of the Lock' stands forth in the classes of liter- 
ature as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry. With 
elegance of description and justness of precept, he had 
now exhibited boundless fertility of invention." — Samuel 
Johnson. 

" Pope is a representative of fine literature in general. 
. . . In the ' Rape of the Lock ' there is a game of cards 
played and played with a brilliancy of effect and felicity of 
selection, applied to the circumstances, which make it a sort 
of gem within a gem. . . . The true pretensions of Pope 
are sustained as the most brilliant writer of his own class in 
European literature." — De Quincey. 

" In Pope we have the constant effort to condense, to con- 
centrate meaning. The thought has been turned over and 
over, till it is brought out finally with a point and finish 
which themselves elicit admiration. Sometimes, but rarely, 
does the severity of the writer's taste allow him to overpoint 
what he wishes to say and to let the epigram run away with 
him. ' ' — Mark Pattison. 



POPE 197 

" When the vast number of his couplets are considered, 
their fastidious correctness is truly astonishing." — H. T. 
Tuckerman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is Man. 
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 
A being darkly wise and rudely great ; 
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, 
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, 
He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest ; 
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast ; 
In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 
Born but to die and reasoning but to err." 

— Essay on Man. 

" 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill 
Appear in writing or in judging ill ; 
But, of the two, less dangerous is the offence 
To tire our patience than mislead our sense. 
Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 
Ten censure wrong, for one who writes amiss ; 
A fool might once himself alone expose, 
Now one in verse makes many more in prose." 

— Essay on Criticism. 

'"Tis from high life high characters are drawn ; 
A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn ; 
A judge is just, a chancellor juster still ; 
A gownman learned ; a bishop, what you will ; 
Wise, if a minister ; but, if a king, 
More wise, more learn'd, more just, more ev'rything." 

— Moral Essays, 

9. Delicate Skill in Criticism. — " If he had an ex- 
cessive hatred of stupid authors, he admired the good and 
the great ones all the more. . . . No example proves to 
us better than his own how much the faculty of a sensitive, 



I98 POPE 

delicate critic is an active faculty. He who has nothing to 
express neither feels nor perceives in such a manner. 
When one is a critic to this extent, it is because one is a 
poet. . . . Pope has denned and chalked out the fine 
part of the true critic in many passages full of nobleness and 
fire. . . . No one, perhaps, has been conscious of lit- 
erary stupidity and suffered from it in as high a degree as 
Pope." — St. Beuve. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace, 
The naked nature and the living grace, 
With gold and jewels cover every part, 
And hide with ornaments their want of art. 
True wit is nature to advantage dress'd ; 
What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed ; 
Something whose truth, convinced at sight we find, 
That gives us back the image of our mind. 
As shades more sweetly recommend the light, 
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. 
For works may have more wit than does 'em good, 
As bodies perish through excess of blood." 

— Essay on Criticism. 

" In all debates where critics bear a part, 
Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, 
Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit ; 
How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ ; 
How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow ; 
But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe. 
These, only these, support the crowded stage, 
From eldest Heywood down to Cibber's age." 

— Imitations of Horace. 

" But most by numbers judge a poet's song, 

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong ; 
In the bright Muse, though thousand charms conspire, 
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; 



POPE 199 

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
Not mend their minds ; as some to church repair, 
Not for the doctrine but the music there. 
These equal syllables alone require, 
Though oft the ear the open vowels tire ; 
While expletives their feeble aid do join ; 
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line ; 
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes 
With sure returns of still expected rhymes : 
Where'er you find ' the cooling western breeze,' 
In the next line, it ' whispers through the trees : ' 
If crystal streams ' with pleasing murmurs creep,' 
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with ' sleep ; ' 
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught 
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 
A needless Alexandrine ends the song." 

— Essay on Criticism. 

10. Religious Faith— Conventional Morality. — 

"Pope, wheresoever his heart speaks loudly, shows how deep 
had been his early impressions from Christianity. ... It 
is remarkable, also, that rope betrays, in all places where he 
has occasion to argue about Christianity, how much grander 
and more faithful to that great theme w r ere the subconscious 
perceptions of his heart than the explicit commentaries of his 
understanding. He, like so many others, was unable to read 
or interpret the testimonies of his own heart — an unfathomea 
deep, over which diviner agencies brood than are legible to 
the intellect The cipher written on his heaven-visited heart 
was deeper than his understanding could interpret." — De 
Quincey. 

1 In Pope's writings ... he [the reader] will find 
the very excellences after which our poets strive in vain . . . 
and a morality infinitely more merciful, as well as more right- 
eous, than the one now in vogue among the poetasters, by 
honest faith in God. . He went through doubt, 

contradiction, confusion, to which yours are simple and light, 



200 POPE 

and conquered. ... In all times and places, as far as 
we can judge, the man was heart-whole, more and not less 
righteous than his fellows. With his whole soul he hates what 
is evil, as far as he can recognize it. With his whole soul he 
loves what is good, as far as he can recognize that. With his 
whole soul believes that there is a righteous and good God, 
whose order no human folly or crime can destroy; and he 
will say so ; and does say it, clearly, simply, valiantly, rev- 
erently, in his 'Essay on Man.' . . . There were in that 
diseased, sensitive cripple no vain repinings, no moon-struck 
howls, no impious cries against God : ' Why hast thou made 
me thus ? ' To him, God is a righteous God, a God of or- 
der." — Charles Kings ley. 

" Pope was ... in his way, as fair an embodiment 
as we could expect of that ' plain living and high thinking ' 
of which Wordsworth regretted the disappearance. 
A tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart." — Leslie Stephen. 

'* His letters and prose writings give a very favorable idea 
of his moral character in all respects. . . . If I had to 
choose, there are one or two persons — and but one or two — 
that I should like to have been better than Pope ! " — William 
Hazhtt. 

" His filial piety and steadiness in his friendships are 
publicly attested, and his many private charities are equally 
w T ell ascertained." — Mark Pattison. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame ; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent; 



POPE 201 

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns 
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : 
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all." 

— Essay on Man. 

" To each unthinking being, Heaven, a friend, 
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end : 
To man imparts it, but with such a view 
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too : 
The hour conceaPd, and so remote the fear, 
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. 
Great standing miracle ! that Heaven assign'd 
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind." 

— Essay on Man. 

" Father of all ! in every age, 
In every clime adored, 
By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 

Save me alike from foolish pride 

Or impious discontent 
At aught thy wisdom has denied 

Or aught thy goodness lent. 
Teach me to feel another's woe, 

To hide the fault I see ; 
That mercy I to others show, 

That mercy show to me." 

— The Universal Prayer. 

II. Erudition — Wide Learning. — "He read only to 
store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his 
authors presented with undistinguishable voracity and with 
an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice. 
The ' Essay on Criticism ' displays such extent of compre- 
hension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with 



202 POPE 

mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern 
learning as are not often attained by the maturest age and 
longest experience. . . . His frequent references to his- 
tory, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his 
images selected from art and nature, with his observations on 
the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an in- 
telligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and 
diligent, eager to pursue knowledge and attentive to retain 
it. These benefits of nature he improved by in- 

cessant and unwearied diligence ; he had recourse to every 
source of intelligence, and lost no opportunity of informa- 
tion. " — Samuel Johnson. 

" The fact is, Pope's curiosity was too inordinate — his desire 
to know everything all at once too strong — to admit of the de- 
lay of learning a foreign language ; and he was consequently 
a reader of translations. . . . He was, as a boy, a simply 
ferocious reader, and was acquainted with the contents of the 
great poets of both antiquity and the modern world. His 
studies, at once intense, prolonged, and exciting, injured his 
feeble health, and made him the life-long sufferer he was." — 
Augustine Birr ell. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" When first young Maro, in his boundless mind, 
A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd, 
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, 
And but from nature's fountain scorn'd to draw : 
But when to examine every part he came, 
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design : 
And rules as strict his labour'd work confine 
As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line. 
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem ; 
To copy nature is to copy them." 

— Essay on Criticism. 



POPE 203 

" At length Erasmus, that great injured name, 
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame !) 
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age, 
And drove those holy vandals off the stage. 
But see ! each Muse, in Leo's golden days, 
Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays. 
Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread, 
Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverend head. 
Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive ; 
Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live ; 
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; 
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung. 
Immortal Vida ! on whose honoured brow 
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow : 
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, 
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame ! " 

— Essay on Criticism. 

12. Fragmentariness — Lack of Logical Se- 
quence. — " Of all the poets that have practised reasoning 
in verse, Pope is the most inconsequential in the deduction of 
his thoughts and the most severely distressed in the effort to 
effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are 
not ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. 
All his thinking proceeded by insulated and discontinuous 
jets ; and the only resource for him, or chance of even seem- 
ing correctness, lay in the liberty of stringing his aphoristic 
thoughts like pearls, having no relation to each other but that 
of contiguity. . . The ' Essay on Man ' sins chiefly 

by want of a central principle and by want, therefore, of all 
coherency amongst the separate thoughts. The ' Essay on 
Criticism ' is a collection of independent maxims, tied to- 
gether into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural 
order or logical dependency : generally so vague as to mean 
nothing. . . . The ' Atossa ' is a mere chaos of incom- 
patibilities, thrown together as into some witch's cauldron. 
The witch, however, had sometimes an unaffected malignity, 



204 POPE 

a sincerity of venom in her wrath, which acted chemically as 
a solvent for combining the heterogeneous ingredients in her 
kettle; whereas the want of truth and earnestness in Pope 
leaves the incongruities in his kettle of description to their 
natural incoherent operation on the reader. . . . [The 
' Essay on Man' is] an accumulation of diamond dust without 
principles of coherency. ... It is, indeed, the realiza- 
tion of anarchy ; and one amusing test of this may be found 
in the fact that different commentators have deduced from it 
the very opposite theories. . . . The ' Essay on Man ' 
in one point resembles some doubtful inscriptions in ancient 
forms of Oriental languages, which, being made up elliptically 
of mere consonants, can be read into very different senses 
according to the different sets of vowels which the particular 
reader may choose to interpolate." — De Quincey. 

"The first thing which strikes us on a rapid survey of 
Pope's writings is their fragmentary nature. . . . The 
1 Essay on Man ' and all the satires, imitations, and other 
essays are only disjointed members or scraps of one vast phil- 
osophical work, which never saw the light. This fragmentary 
character matters less to us because it is not his substance or 
his general effect which we delight in in Pope but his details. 
His best poems are bits of mosaic, which we admire the most 
when we pull them to pieces, tessera by tessera, and analyze 
their exquisite workmanship." — Edmund Gosse. 

" He unluckily fills up the gaps in his logical edifice with 
the untempered mortar of obsolete metaphysics, long since 
become utterly uninteresting to men." — Leslie Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, 
For there's a happiness as well as care. 
Music resembles poetry : in each 
Are nameless graces which no methods teach, 
And which a master-hand alone can reach. 



POPE 205 

If, where the rules not far enough extend, 

(Since rules were made but to promote their end,) 

Some lucky license answer to the full 

The intent proposed, that license is a rule. 

Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 

May boldly deviate from the common track." 

— Essay on Criticism. 

" In lazy apathy let stoics boast 

Their virtue fix'd ; 'tis fixed as in a frost ; 

Contracted all, retiring to the breast ; 

But strength of mind is exercise, not rest : 

The rising tempest puts in act the soul ; 

Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. 

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, 

Reason the card, but passion is the gale ; 

Nor God alone in the still calm we find, 

He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.'' 

— Essay on Man. 



13. Contempt for Womanhood. — " It is painful to 
follow a man of genius through a succession of inanities de- 
scending into absolute nonsense and of vulgar fictions some- 
times terminating in brutalities. These are harsh words, but 
not harsh enough by half as applied to Pope's gallery of fe- 
male portraits. . . . The describer knows, as well as any 
of us the spectators know, that he is romancing, 
and we cannot submit to be detained by a picture which, 
according to the shifting humor of the poet, angry or laugh- 
ing, is a lie where it is not a jest, is an affront to the truth 
of nature where it is not confessedly an extravagance of 
drollery. In a playful fiction we can submit with pleasure to 
the most enormous exaggerations ; but then they must be of- 
fered as such. These of Pope's are not so offered but as se- 
rious portraits ; and in that character they affect us as odious 
and malignant libels. . . There is no truth in Pope's 

satiric sketches of women — not even colorable truth ; but if 



206 POPE 

there were, how frivolous, how hollow, to erect into solemn, 
monumental protestations against the whole female sex what, 
if examined, turn out to be pure casual eccentricities or else 
personal idiosyncrasies or else foibles shockingly caricatured, 
but above all to be such foibles as could not have connected 
themselves with sincere feelings of indignation in any ration- 
al mind. . . . Pope's pretended portraitures of women 
the more they ought to have been true, as professing 
to be studies from life, the more atrociously they are false, 
and false in the transcendent sense of being impossible. Heaps 
of contradiction or of revolting extravagance do not ver- 
ify themselves to our loathing incredulity because the artist 
chooses to come forward with his arms akimbo, saying an- 
grily, ' But I tell you, sir, these are not fancy pieces ! These 
ladies whom I have here lampooned are familiarly known to 
me; they are my particular friends.' " — De Quincey. 

" In his epistle on the character of women, no one who has 
ever known a noble woman, nay, I should almost say no one 
who has ever had a mother or a sister, will find much to 
please him. The climax of his praise rather degrades than 
elevates. . . . His nature delighted more in detecting 
the blemish than in enjoying the charm." — Lowell. 

" Contempt veiled under the show of deference, a mockery 
of chivalry, its form without its spirit — this is the attitude as- 
sumed towards women by the poet in this piece [' Rape of the 
Lock ']. This feeling towards woman is not the poet's idio- 
syncrasy ; here he is but the representative of his age." — 
Mark Pattison. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" There Affectation, with a sickly mien, 
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen ; 
Practised to lisp and hang the head aside, 
Faints into airs and languishes with pride ; 
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 



POPE 207 

Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show. 

The fair ones feel such maladies as these, 

When each new night-dress gives a new disease." 

— The Rape of the Lock. 

11 She [Queen Caroline] wears no colours (sign of grace) 
On any part except her face ; 

All white and black beside : 
Dauntless her look, her gesture proud, 
Her voice theatrically loud, 

And masculine her stride. 

So have I seen in black and white 
A prating thing, a magpie hight, 

Majestically stalk : 
A stately worthless animal, 
That plies the tongue and wags the tail, 

All flutter, pride, and talk." — Artemisia. 

"Ladies, like variegated tulips, show; 

'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe ; 
Fine by defect and delicately weak, 
Their happy spots the nice admirer take. 
'Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarm'd, 
Awed without virtue, without beauty charm'd ; 
Her tongue bewitch'd as oddly as her eyes ; 
Less wit than mimic, more a wit than wise. 
Strange graces still and stranger flights she had, 
Was just not ugly, and was iust not mad ; 
Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create, 
As when she touched the brink of all we hate." 

— Epistle to a Lady. 



BURNS, 1759-1796 

Biographical Outline. — Robert Burns, born at Allo- 
way, Scotland, January 25, 1759; his father, a nursery gar- 
dener, spelled his name Burness or Burnes ; Burns attends a 
school at Alloway Mill in his sixth year, and soon afterward 
enters a private school set up by his father and four neigh- 
bors ; in 1766 his father takes a poor farm at Mount Oliphant, 
two miles away, and the school attendance of Burns and his 
brother Gilbert becomes irregular ; they are taught thereafter 
chiefly by their father; in 1772 Robert attends a school at 
Dalrymple ; he improves his writing, and is in a school at Ayr 
for three weeks during the summer of 1773, where he learns a 
bit of French ; at thirteen he is threshing corn, and at fifteen 
is his father's chief laborer ; he learns many popular legends 
from an old woman neighbor, and borrows and reads several 
biographical and theological books ; he reads also the Specta- 
tor, Pope's translation of the " Iliad," and some of the works 
of Smollett, Ramsay, and Fergusson ; he picks up French 
readily, reads " Telemaque" and tries Latin, though with 
little success ; his literary talents attract the attention of the 
neighbors, and his father prophesies that Robert will do some- 
thing extraordinary; his first poem, "Handsome Nell," is 
composed in the autumn of 1775, and was addressed to a fel- 
low-laborer in the fields. 

In 1777 his father removes to a larger farm at Lochlea, 
Tarbolton, while Robert goes to live with an uncle at Balloch- 
neil, where he studies surveying at a school in the neighbor- 
ing village of Kirkeswold ; here he meets certain jovial smug- 
glers, learns to " fill his glass," falls in love with " a charming 
fillette," scribbles verses and defeats his school-master in a 

208 



BURNS 209 

debate when rashly challenged by the latter ; on his return 
to the farm at Lochlea he reads Thompson, Shenstone, Sterne, 
and Ossian ; while at Lochlea he writes " Winter," " The 
Death of Poor Maillie," ''John Barleycorn," and other 
songs; in 1780 he joins a "Bachelor's Club" at Tarbolton, 
where he debates on love, friendship, etc.; he falls in love 
with Ellison Begbie, daughter of a neighboring farmer, who 
is the " Mary Morison " of his poems, but he is rejected by 
her on his departure for Irvine, whither he goes in the sum- 
mer of 1 781 to enter a flax-dressing business with a relative of 
his mother's. 

At Irvine he forms a friendship with Richard Brown, a 
sailor, who encourages him to " endeavor at the character of 
a poet," but also leads him into vice; while he is carousing, 
on January 1, 1782, the flax-dressing shop takes fire and is 
destroyed ; Burns thereupon returns to Lochlea, and lives for 
awhile frugally and temperately; in April, 1783, he begins a 
commonplace book, which he continues at intervals through 
many years ; in 1 781 he had joined a Masonic lodge at Tar- 
bolton and he remained an enthusiastic Mason during life; 
Burns's father, a devout Presbyterian and the author of a 
little " Manual of Religious Belief," died February 13, 1784; 
with his brother Gilbert, Burns saves enough by litigation 
over his father's lease to start a farm of one hundred and 
eighteen acres at Mossgiel, near Mauchline, where they settle 
in 1784 as subtenants of the writer Gavin Hamilton, who be- 
comes a warm friend of Burns ; Burns becomes known to the 
educated men of Mauchline and Kilmarnock, writes more 
verses, is severely ill, and writes several lines expressive of 
penitence, but soon becomes the father of an illegitimate 
child; his brother Gilbert suggests that the "Epistle to 
Davie," written in January, 1785, will " bear printing ; " he 
writes the two epistles to John Lapraik in April, 1785, and 
"Death and Dr. Hornbrook " about the same time; Dr. 
Hornbrook is John Wilson, then a village apothecary. 
14 



2IO BURNS 

Burns throws himself enthusiastically into the theological 
struggle then raging between the " Auld Licht" and the 
" New Licht " parties, during which his landlord and friend 
Hamilton was twice tried for neglecting Sunday ; in connec- 
tion with this controversy Burns writes his " Twa Herds" 
about April, 1785 ; it is circulated in manuscript, as is 
" Holy Willie's Prayer," written about the same time; dur- 
ing 1785 he writes also his " Holy Fair" and his " Cotter's 
Saturday Night," which describes his father's daily devotions; 
Burns succeeded his father as head of the family, and is said 
to have prayed most impressively; while at Mossgiel, 1 785— 
86 he writes also the "Address to the Deil," "The Jolly 
Beggars," "Twa Dogs," "A Vision," "A Dream," "Hal- 
loween," "To a Mouse," "To a Mountain Daisy," and 
various songs ; meantime he has fallen in love with Jean Ar- 
mour, daughter of an " Auld Licht " master mason of Mauch- 
line, and in the spring of 1786, when she is about to become 
the mother of a child by Burns, he gives her, according to the 
morals and customs of his class, a written acknowledgment 
that she is his wife; her father declares that the marriage must 
be dissolved, and she surrenders the document, thinking, as 
did her friends and advisers, that this was equivalent to a di- 
vorce ; Burns, disgusted, resolves to emigrate and secure a 
position as overseer of an estate in Jamaica on a salary of 
^30 a year ; at Hamilton's advice he decides to publish his 
poems, to obtain the necessary passage-money, and they are 
printed in Kilmarnock in July, 1786; Burns's friends sub- 
scribed for three hundred and fifty copies ; five hundred and 
ninety- nine were sold by August 2 2d, bringing him about 
^20 and a considerable reputation. 

Still proposing emigration, he makes over the copyright of 
his poems to his brother in favor of his illegitimate daughter; 
for a time he is compelled to dodge a warrant issued by 
his wife's father, but he is at Mossgiel September 3, 1786, 
when his wife gives birth to twins, who live but a short time; 



BURNS 211 

meantime he has become " betrothed," by an exchange of 
Bibles, to Mary Campbell, daughter of a sailor from Dunoon, 
whom he had met while she was a nursemaid in the family of 
Hamilton; this passion is commemorated in Burns's " High- 
land Lassie," his "Will Ye Go to the Indes, My Mary?" 
his "To Mary in Heaven " (October, 1789), and his " High- 
land Mary " (November, 1792), and it was the most endur- 
ing of his life ; Mary Campbell died in October, 1 786 ; Burns 
receives a letter from Blacklock, the blind poet, praising his 
poems and urging a second edition ; he is also encouraged by 
Dugald Stewart, with whom he is invited to dine October 23, 
1786, at the instigation of Mr. Mackenzie, a surgeon at Mauch- 
line ; his printer at Kilmarnock refuses to take a second 
edition without an advance of ^27, which Burns replies " is 
out of my power; " a friend, Mr. Ballantyne of Ayr, offers to 
loan the money, but advises Burns to seek a publisher in Ed- 
inburgh ; just before going to Edinburgh he meets Mrs. Dun- 
lop of Dunlop, who becomes his friend and correspondent 
through life. 

He leaves Mossgiel November 27, 1786, riding a borrowed 
pony, and reaches Edinburgh the next day ; while in Edin- 
burgh he visits the grave of Fergusson, to whom he erected a 
monument in the following year, and meets Henry Erskine ; 
Lord Glencairn, a cousin of Burns's friend Dr. Dalrymple, in- 
duces his aristocratic friends to subscribe for a second edition 
of Burns's poems, and Henry Mackenzie, the " Man of Feel- 
ing," reviews them enthusiastically in the Lounger, calling 
Burns a " heaven-taught ploughman;" the poems are also 
favorably noticed in the Edinburgh Magazine, and Burns is 
welcomed by all the literary celebrities in Edinburgh, includ- 
ing the Duchess of Gordon, Robertson, Blair, and Adam Fer- 
guson ; he also makes acquaintance with "less exhalted cir- 
cles," and joins a convivial club called the " Crochallan 
Fencibles," for which he writes verses not creditable to his 
genius ; in the better social circles he shines as a conversation- 



212 BURNS 

alist, and is noted for his " matchless eyes like coals of living 
fire; " the second edition of his poems appears April 31, 1787, 
and 2,800 are subscribed for ; eventually, the edition brings 
Burns about ,£500 ; in the spring of 1787 he enters into an 
agreement to contribute Scotch songs to the collection then 
in preparation, and in May a volume appears with two songs 
by Burns ; for these and his many other songs he neither 
asked nor received payment, writing them from purely patri- 
otic motives; during the summer of 1787 he makes a tour, 
inspecting several farms, and collects several songs; with 
Robert Ainsley, a young writer, he visits Coldstream (where 
he crosses the bridge, to be in England), Kelso, Jedburgh, 
Alnwick, Workmath, Newcastle, Carlisle, and Dumfries, and 
returns to Mauchline June 9th ; here, though disgusted at the 
servility of her father in view of Burns's new fame, he renews 
his old relations with Jean Armour. 

After a month at Mauchline and a tour in the West High- 
lands and Paisley, he visits Edinburgh, August 7th, and there 
chums with one Nichol, a self-taught teacher at the High 
School; with Nichol he starts, August 25th, on a tour to the 
East Highlands, and visits Falkirk, Stirling, Crieff, Dankeld, 
Blair, Dolwhinnie, through Shathsprey, Aviemore, Dalsie, 
Kilmarnock, Inverness, Nairn, Farres, and Tocholers ; while 
at Blair he is kindly received by the Duke of Athole ; he re- 
turns by Aberdeen, Montrose, and Perth, and reaches Edin- 
burgh September 16, 1786 ; later in the same year he makes 
another tour in the East Highlands, and visits Ramsay at 
Menteith ; after his return to Edinburgh, in the fall of 1786, 
he lodges at No. 2 St. James Square; he remains in Edinburgh 
during the winter of 1786-87, vainly trying to get a settlement 
with his publisher and continually talking of buying a farm ; 
while there he meets a deserted widow, Mrs. M'Lehose, with 
whom he carries on afterward a long correspondence under 
the names, respectively, of Clarinder and Sylvander, and with 
whom he contemplates marriage ; he leaves Edinburgh Feb- 



BURNS 213 

ruary 16, 1787, and visits Glasgow on his way to Mauchline; 
here he reconciles Jean Armour to her mother, who had 
disowned her because of her continued relations with Burns ; 
on receiving ^500 from his publisher, he loans ^£90 to his 
brother, who is still struggling with the farm at Mossgiel. 

In the spring of 1787 Burns receives a " qualification " for 
a position as an excise officer ; he has continued his letters to 
Mrs. M'Lehose, but about this time Jean Armour gives birth 
to a second pair of twins, whose parentage Burns acknowl- 
edges ; in August, 1787, he is legally married to Jean, they 
are duly " admonished " in church, and Burns gives a guinea 
to the poor; in apologizing to Mrs. M'Lehose, two years 
later, he encloses in a letter to her his poem " Ae Fonde 
Kiss, and Then We Sever ; " meantime he had bought a long 
lease of a farm of one hundred acres, called Ellisland, six 
miles from Dumfries; here he comes June 13, 1789, and 
begins to build a house, his wife meanwhile staying at Mauch- 
line, forty-six miles away ; to her he refers in " O a' the 
Airts the Wind Can Blow" and "O Were I on Parnassus 
Hill ; " with his wife he settles in the new house in Decem- 
ber, 1789 ; about this time he writes " I Hae a Wife o' My 
Ain," " Auld Lang Syne," and " My Bonnie Mary ; " on 
August 18, 1789, another child was born to him; soon af- 
terward, owing to poor returns from his farm, he resolves to 
make it a dairy farm and to leave the superintendence of it 
to his wife, while he can be earning something as an excise 
officer ; he accordingly obtains an appointment as exciseman 
for his district, an office bringing him a net income of about 
^40 ; his duties compelled him to ride two hundred miles a 
week through ten parishes ; soon after his appointment he 
writes "To Mary in Heaven;" convivial meetings during 
the autumn of 1789 are celebrated in " Willie Brew'd a Peck 
o' Maut " and the "Whistle; " while " Hear, Land o' Cakes 
and Brither Scots " is addressed about the same time to Fran- 
cis Grose, the artist and antiquarian ; Burns asks Grose to 



214 BURNS 

make a drawing of Alloway Kirk, the burial-place of his 
family, and Grose consents on condition that Burns write for 
him a witch story ; as his part of the bargain Burns writes 
" Tarn o' Shanter," composing it in one day as he walked by 
the Nith ; "Tarn" first appeared in Grose's "Antiquities 
of Scotland " in April, 1791. 

Soon after settling at Ellisland, Burns aids in establishing 
a local library, and records are now extant showing that he 
purchased for himself, about this time, many standard vol- 
umes ; he always loved animals and detested field sports ; his 
farming is a failure, and in the summer of 1791 he decides to 
throw up his lease ; the death of Burns' s patron, Lord Glen- 
cairn, in 1791, gives rise to his "Lament," but lessens the 
poet's chances of promotion to the excise service ; he re- 
ceives, however, an appointment as exciseman at Dumfries at 
a salary of £70, and removes thither in December, 1791, re- 
siding first in what is now Bank Street and later in what is 
now Burns Street; in April, 1791, Burns had been presented 
by his wife with a third son and by one Anne Park with an 
illegitimate daughter, whom Mrs. Burns promptly adopted. 

Burns again visited Edinburgh, briefly, in December, 
1 791 ; at Dumfries he associates with the higher families, es- 
pecially with that of Walter Riddel, a convivialist, who had a 
fine library and a wife of some poetic ability ; by reason of a 
Jacobite epigram, written long before on a window in Stirling 
Castle, and by some passages of his poems, Burns soon be- 
comes suspected as a Jacobite in the intense political feeling 
due to the French Revolution, now current ; while watching 
an armed smuggling vessel in the Norway Firth, February 27, 
1792, Burns composes "The Deil's Awa with the Excise- 
man ; " he afterward leads a band of soldiers to the assault, 
and is the first to board the ship ; the ship is condemned, 
and Burns buys her guns for ^3 and sends them as a pres- 
ent to the French legislative body, and escapes dismissal from 
his office only by the intervention of his friend Graham; 



BURNS 215 

he joins a secret club, and writes but suppresses a political 
squib, "The Truce of Liberty;" he joins the volunteers 
formed in 1795, and gives offence by toasting Washington as 
a greater man than Pitt ; these acts lessen the possibility of 
promotion to a supervisorship or a collectorship, which he 
greatly desired ; although he leads an immoral life, he takes a 
great interest in the education of his children ; he becomes an 
honorary burgess of Dumfries and a member of the town li- 
brary ; his "devil " is hard drinking at the country-houses of 
gentlemen ; in the autumn of 1792 Burns accepts an invitation 
to contribute Scotch songs to a collection then forming, the 
melodies being first supplied ; among the songs so contrib- 
uted is his " Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled," composed 
in July, 1793 ; during 1794-95 he writes several other songs 
addressed to " Chloris, the Lassie Wi' the Lint-white Locks," 
a Mrs. Whepole, for whom Burns's passion was purely polit- 
ical ; his song " Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," was ad- 
dressed to a nurse during Burns's last illness. 

In 1788, and again in 1794, he refuses to become a regular 
contributor to London journals, although offered a salary each 
time as large as his annual excise fees ; he also steadfastly 
refuses to receive money for his songs, saying that they are 
"either above or below the price ; " at Burns's death, how- 
ever, the publisher of the songs voluntarily gave up his rights 
in them in favor of the poet's family and also turned over to 
the heirs his correspondence with Burns ; over one hundred 
and eighty songs were contributed by Burns to the " Musical 
Museum," though only forty-seven are said to be entirely his 
own work ; Burns's total income at Dumfries amounted to 
about ^90, which enabled him to keep a servant and to live 
in comfort ; the death of his daughter in the autumn of 1795 
greatly distresses him, and he is ill from October to Jan- 
uary ; while recovering, he indulges in a carouse, sleeps out 
of doors, is taken with rheumatic fever, and his health stead- 
ily declines; he had been afflicted for some time with a 



2l6 BURNS 

" flying gout," which he attributed to the follies of his youth ; 
in his last days he is forced to ask loans of small amounts, 
though his salary as exciseman is continued through the per- 
formance of his duties by a friend ; he dies at Dumfries, July 
21, 1796, and a posthumous son is born during the funeral- 
service ; his family received ^"700 from a subscription started 
by friends and ^£1,400 from an edition of Burns's poems 
published in 1800 ; a mausoleum for Burns was erected at 
Dumfries, and his remains were transported thither in Sep- 
tember, 18 1 5. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BURNS. 

Stevenson, R. L., " Familiar Studies." New York, 1891, Scribner, 

95-104. 
Morley, J., "English Men of Letters" (Shairp). New York, 1879, 

Harper, 186-205. 
Carlyle, T. , " Heroes and Hero-Worship." London, 1841, Chapman & 

Hall, 249-315. 
Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875, 

Appleton, 287-339. 
Carlyle, T., "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." London, 1847, 

Chapman & Hall, 258-317. 
Jeffrey, T., "Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, A. Hart, 

6 : 335-347- 

Shairp, J. C, "Aspects of Poetry." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 164-194. 
Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 

Green, & Co., 164-172. 
Hazlitt, W., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 

170-189. 
Wilson, J., "The Genius and Character of Burns." New York, 1872, 

Macmillan, v. index. 
Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1885, Moxon, 

189-200. 
Taine, H. A., " History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Holt, 3 : 43-60. 
Hawthorne, N., " Our Old Home." Boston, 1870, Osgood, 2 : 225-247. 
Gilfillan, G., "Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1845, Tait, 

1 : 54-64. 



BURNS 217 

Hoffmann, F A., " Poetry, Its Origin," etc. London, 1884, 1 : 502- 

521 
Howitt, W., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge, 379-441. 
Keats, J . , " Poems." New York, n. d., Crowell, 255. 
Kingsley, Charles, "Works." London, 1880, Macmillan, 20 : 127-184. 
Longfellow, H. W., " Ultima Thule " (nine stanzas addressed to Burns), 

" Works." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin & Co , 397. 
Montgomery, J., " Lectures on Poetry," etc. New York, 1833, Harper, 

184-222. 
Russell, A. P., "Characteristics." Boston, 1884, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 132-159 
Shairp, J. C, "On Poetic Interpretation of Nature." Boston, 1885, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 212-219. 
Stuart, J. M., " Reminiscences and Essays." London, 1884, Low, 

Marston & Co., 1 19-155. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1848, 

Francis, 193-204. 
Moir, D. M., "Sketches of Poetic Literature." Edinburgh, 1852, 

Blackwood, 1 95-2 1 1 . 
Campbell, T., " Specimens of the English Poets," London, 1819. 

Murray, 7 : 230-274. 
Cunningham, A., "The Life and Land of Robert Burns." New York, 

1841, Langley, 158-163. 
Craik, G. L., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1864, 

Scribner, 417-446 
Emerson, R. W., "Miscellanies " Boston, 1870, Fields, 363-369. 
Friswell, J. H., " Essays on English Writers." London, 1869, Lowe, 

350-356 
Hannay, J., "Satires and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 198- 

204 
Wilson, J., "Essays." Edinburgh, 1861, Blackwood, 210-222. 
Blackie, J. S., "Life of Robert Burns." London, 1888, Walter Scott, 

155— 1 76, v. index. 
Gosse, E., "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." New York, 

1889, Macmillan, v. index. 
Wordsworth, W., " Poetical Works." New York, n. d., Crowell, 253. 
Critic ; 2 : 337-338 (Walt Whitman). 

Edinburgh Review, 48 : 267-312 (Carlyle) ; 13 : 249-276 (Jeffrey). 
Quarterly Review, I : 16-36 (Scott). 

Atlantic, 44; 502-513 (J. C. Shairp); 6: 385-395 (Hawthorne). 
Belgravia, 12 1481 (P. Fitzgerald). 



21 8 BURNS 

North American Review, 143 : 427-435 (Walt Whitman). 
Southern Literary Messenger, J : 249-252 (H. T. Tuckerman). 
English Illustrated Magazine, 17 : 323-325 (A. Lang). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Sincerity — Manliness — Naturalness. — " The 

excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in 
poetry or prose ; but at the same time it is plain and easily 
recognized. . . . The passion that is traced before us 
has glowed in a living heart ; the opinion he utters has risen 
in his own understanding and has been a light to his own 
steps. He does not write from hearsay but from sight and 
experience ; it is the scenes he has lived and labored amidst 
that he describes. . . . He speaks forth what is in him 
because his heart is too full to be silent. ... It was a 
curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, second- 
hand eighteenth century, that of a hero starting up among 
the artificial pasteboard figures and productions in the guise 
of Robert Burns. ... A noble rough genuineness ; 
homely, rustic, honest ; true simplicity of strength j with its 
lightning fire, with its dewey pity. . . . We recollect 
no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us at the 
first and abides with us to the last with such a total want of 
affectation. He is an honest man and an honest writer. 
A certain rugged sterling worth pervades whatever 
Burns has written ; a virtue as of green fields and mountain 
breezes dwells in his poetry ; it is redolent of natural life and 
hardy natural men. . . . In his successes and his failures, 
in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, 
and glitters with no lustre but his own. . . . The chief 
excellence of Burns is his sincerity and indisputable air of 
truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys ; no hollow fan- 
tastic sentimentalities." — Carlyle. 

" Consider the perfect naturalness, the entire spontaneity, 
of his singing. It gushes from him as easily, as clearly, as 



BURNS 219 

serenely as the skylark's song does. In this he surpasses all 
other song-composers. In truth, when he is at his best, when 
his soul is really filled with his subject, it is not composing at 
all ; the word is not applicable to him. He sings because he 
cannot help singing — because his heart is full and could not 
otherwise relieve itself. . . . ^The characteristics of the 
best songs of Burns are absolute truthfulness, truthfulness to 
the great facts of life, truthfulness also to the singer's own feel- 
ings — what we mean by sincerity, second, perfect naturalness : 
the feeling embodies itself in a form and language as natural 
to the poet as its song is to the bird. This is what Pitt noted 
when he said of Burns' s poems that no verse since Shake- 
speare's has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from 
nature. I should venture to hint that in this gift of perfect 
spontaneity Burns was even beyond Shakespeare. 
At the basis of all his powers lay absolute truthfulness, intense 
reality, truthfulness to the objects which he saw, truthfulness 
to himself as the seer of them. . . . He expressed what 
he saw, not in the stock phrase of books, but in his own ver- 
nacular, the language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, 
a vitality that tingled to the finger tips." — Principal Shairp. 

" Burns has one of the noblest qualities a man can possess 
— entire sincerity with himself. . . . And his only wish 
was not to produce fine spun notions or to please the critics 
but to touch the heart." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

ft No poet since the Psalmist of Israel ever gave the world 
more assurance of a man ; none lived a life more strenuous, 
engaged in eternal conflict of the passions and by them over- 
come — 'mighty and mightily fallen.' " — Andrew Lang. 

"His character was remarkable for its manliness, its sin- 
cerity, and its independence. . . . Where can we find 
another poet with an imagination capable of so idealizing the 
subject and yet so familiar with its details as to present a 
picture as true as it is beautiful? " — Emerson. 

" After full retrospect of his works and life, the ' odd kind 



220 BURNS 

chiel ' remains to my heart and brain as almost the tenderest, 
manliest, dearest flesh-and-blood figure in ail the streams and 
clusters of by-gone poets. . . . He treats fresh, often 
coarse, natural occurrences, loves, persons, not like many 
new and some old poets in a genteel style of gilt and china, or 
at second or third removes, but in their own atmosphere, 
laughter, sweat, unction." — Walt Whitman. 
" He kept his honesty and truth, 
His independent tongue and pen, 
And moved in manhood as in youth, 
Pride of his fellow men. 

• ••••• • • 

A kind, true heart, a spirit high, 

That could not fear and would not bow, 

Were written in his manly eye 

And on his manly brow." — Fitz- Greene Halleck. 

" There was a thorough and prevailing honesty about 
Burns — that freedom from disguise and simple truth of char- 
acter, to the preservation of which rustic life is eminently 
favorable. He was open and frank in social intercourse, and 
his poems are but the sincere records and out-pourings of his 
mature feelings. . . . Burns lost not the susceptibility of 
his conscience nor the sincerity and manliness of his charac- 
ter." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" He had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his 
bosom — you can almost hear it throb. He has made us as 
well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be, has let out 
the honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal 
conflict of the passions in his breast, with the same frankness 
and truth of description." — William Hazlitt. 

" For the first time this man spoke as men speak, or rather 
as they think, without premeditation, with a mixture of all 
styles, familiar and terrible, hiding an emotion under a joke, 
tender and jeering in the same place, apt to place side by side 



BURNS 221 

tap-room trivialities and the high language of poetry. . . . 
At last, after so many years, we escape from measured decla- 
mation, we hear a man's voice. ... So indifferent was 
he to rules, content to exhibit his feeling as it came to him 
and as he felt it." — Taine. 

"Even in his most graceless sneer, his fault — if fault it be 
— is that he cannot and will not pretend to respect that which 
he knows to be unworthy of respect." — Charles Kingsley. 

" Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth 
He sang, his genius glinted forth — 



It showed my youth 
How Verse may build a princely throne on humble 
truth." — Wordsworth. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" God knows, I'm no the thing I should be, 
Nor am I even the thing I could be, 
But, twenty times, I rather would be 

An atheist clean 
Than under gospel colours hid be, 

Just for a screen. 

An honest man may like a glass, 
An honest man may like a lass, 
But mean revenge an' malice fause 

He'll still disdain, 
An* then cry zeal for Gospel laws 

Like some we ken." 

— Epistle to the Rev. John MeMath. 

11 It's no in titles nor in rank, 

It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest : 
It's no in making muckle mair, 
It's no in books ; it's no in lear 

To make us truly blest ; 



222 BURNS 

. If happiness hae not her seat 
And center in the breast, 
We may be wise or rich or great, 
But never can be blest." 

— Epistle to Davie. 

11 All hail, Religion ! maid divine! 
Pardon a muse sae mean as mine, 
Who in her rough imperfect line 
Thus dares to name thee ; 
To stigmatize false friends of thine, 
Can ne'er defame thee." 

— Epistle to the Rev. John McMath. 

2. Tenderness — Pathos. — "Tears lie in him, and 
consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drops of the summer 
cloud ; and yet he is sweet and soft, sweet as 

the smile when fond lovers meet and soft as their parting 
tear. ... A thousand battle-fields remain unsung ; 
but the Wounded Hare has not perished without its me- 
morial. . . . How his heart flows out in sympathy 
over universal nature, and in her bleakest provinces discerns 
a beauty and a meaning ! * The Daisy ' falls not unheeded 
under his ploughshare, nor the ruined nest of that ' wee, sleek- 
it, cowrin' tim'rous beastie,' cast forth, after all its provident 
pains, to thole the sleety dribble, and cranneuch cauld." — 
Carlyle. 

11 As for his tenderness — the quality without which all 
other poetic excellence is barren — it gushes forth toward every 
creature, animate and inanimate, with one exception, namely, 
the hypocrite." — Charles Kingsley. 

" His forte was in humor and in pathos — or rather in ten- 
derness of feeling. . . . His tenderness is of two sorts ; 
that which is combined with circumstances and characters of 
humble and sometimes ludicrous simplicity, and that which 
is produced by gloomy and distressful impressions acting on 



BURNS 223 

a mind of keen sensibility. . . . The exquisite descrip- 
tion of < The Cotter's Saturday Night ' affords perhaps the 
finest example of this the finest sort of pathos. . . . The 
charm of the fine lines written on turning up a mouse's nest 
with the plough will also be found to consist in the simple 
tenderness of delineation. . . . The verses to a ' Moun- 
tain Daisy,' though more elegant and picturesque, seem to 
derive their chief beauty from the same tone of sentiment. 
. . . Sometimes it is the brief and simple pathos of an old 
ballad. . . . Sometimes it is animated with airy narra- 
tive and adorned with images of the utmost elegance and 
beauty. . . . Sometimes, again, it is plaintive and mourn- 
ful, in the same strain of unaffected sympathy." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

" He speaks to the Devil, in his address to that personage, 
as to an unfortunate comrade, a disagreeable fellow, but fallen 
into trouble. . . . Burns pities, and that sincerely, a 
wounded hare, a mouse whose nest was upturned by his 
plough, a mountain daisy. Is there such a great difference 
between man and beast and plant?" — Taine. 

"In Burns the further widening of human sympathies is 
shown in the new tenderness for animals. The birds, sheep, 
cattle, and wild creatures of the wood and field fill as large a 
space in the poetry of Burns as in that of Wordsworth and 
Coleridge. . . . He transfers the depths of his personal 
affection to natural objects, and speaks of them with often a 
sudden tenderness and exquisite mournfulness of pity or as 
quick sympathy with their joy." — Stopf or d Brooke. 
" We love him not for sweetest song, 
Tho' never tone so tender." — O. IV. Holmes. 

11 With familiar tenderness he dwelt on the lower creatures, 
felt for their sufferings, as if they had been his own, and 
opened men's hearts to feel how much the groans o f creation 
are needlessly increased by the indifference or cruelty of 
man. — -J. C. Shairp. 



224 BURNS 

1 'It is not everyone who can perceive the sublimity of a 
daisy or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn." 
— William Hazlitt. 

"It was this notable amount of backbone and force of arm, 
sensibly felt in his utterances, which gave to his pathos and 
tenderness such healthy grace and such rare freedom from 
anything that savored of sentimentality. The Christian 
element of pity also had a deep fount in his rich human heart, 
and a tear of common blooded affinity was ever ready to be 
dropt, not only over the sorrows of an injured woman, but 
over the pangs of a hunted hare or the terror of a startled 
field-mouse." — -John Stuart Blackie. 

" Of all the men that ever lived, Burns was least of a senti- 
mentalist. He was your true man of feeling. He did not 
preach to Christian people of the duty of humanity to animals; 
he spoke of them in winning words, warm from the manliest 
breast, as his fellow-creatures, and made us feel what we owe. 
His nature was indeed human ; and the tenderness 
and kindliness apparent in every page of his poetry — and most 
of all in his Songs — cannot but have a humanizing effect on 
all those exposed by the necessities of their condition to many 
causes for ever at work to harden or shut up the heart. 
With a rare power of pathos and artless eloquence, 
which could invest a common daisy with human life and 
interest and infuse into the breast of the hare, the mouse, or 
the little bird, a microcosm of human feeling and emotion, 
Burns, with no less poetic power and tenderness, but with 
more practical philosophy, went down into the very heart of 
the Scottish peasant and brought forth materials with which to 
form a noble and a perfect man." — John Wilson [Christo- 
pher North.] 



BURNS 225 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, 
O, what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 

Wi' bickering brattle ! [hurry] 
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, 

Wi' murd'ring pattle ! [paddle] 

I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken Nature's social union, 
An' justified that ill opinion 

Which makes thee startle 
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, 

An' fellow-mortal." — Address To a Mouse. 

" Why, ye tenants of the lake, 

For me your watery haunts forsake ? 
Tell me, fellow-creatures, why 
At my presence thus you fly ; 
Why disturb your social joys, 
Parent, filial, kindred ties ? 
Common friend to you and me, 
Nature's gifts to all are free." 

— On Scaring Some Water-Fowl. 

" Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, 
The bitter little that of life remains ; 
No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains 
To thee shall home or food or pastime yield. 

Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest, 
No more of rest, but now thy dying bed ! 
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, 
The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest." 

— On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp By. 

3. Vigor — Spirit. — " Burns expressed what he saw, not 
in the stock phrases of books, but in his own vernacular, the 
language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, a vitality, 
'5 



226 BURNS 

that tingled to the fingertips, and forced the phrases of his 
peasant dialect into literature, and made them forever classi- 
cal. . . . Burns's keenness of insight keeps pace with 
his keenness of feeling. . . . Here was a man, a son of 
toil looking out on the world from his cottage, on society 
high and low, and on nature homely or beautiful, with the 
clearest eye, a most piercing insight, . . . seeing to the 
core all the sterling worth, nor less the pretence and hollow- 
ness of the men he met, the humor, the drollery, the pathos 
and the sorrow of human existence." — -J. C. Shairp. 

"Observe with what a fierce, prompt force he grasps his 
subject, be what it may ! How he fixes, as it were, the full 
image of the matter in his eyes ; full and clear in every linea- 
ment ; and catches the real type and essence of it amid the 
thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of 
which misleads him ! ... Of the strength, the piercing 
emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of expression 
may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who ever uttered 
sharper sayings than his ; words more memorable, now by 
their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigor and laconic 
pith ? A single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole 
phase. We discern the brawny movements of a gigantic 
though untutored strength, and can understand how, in con- 
versation, his quick, sure insight into men may, as much as 
aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his 
time and country. . . . If we look at his general force 
of soul, his healthy robustness, every way, the rugged down- 
rightness, penetration, generous valor, and manfulness that 
was in him — where shall we readily find a better-gifted man? 
Burns is not more distinguished by the clearness 
than by the impetuous force of his conceptions. ... In 
fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this 
vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions." — Carlyle. 

" We may say of him without excess that his style was his 
slave. Hence that energy so concise, so telling that a foreigner 



BURNS 227 

is tempted to explain it by some special richness or aptitude 
in the dialect he wrote. ... It was by his style and 
not by his matter that he affected Wordsworth and the world. 
They [his works] interest us not in themselves but 
because they have passed through the spirit of so genuine and 
vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of living literature, and 
there was never any more alive than that of Burns." — Robert 
Louis Stevenson. 

11 The fire and fervor without which lyrical poetry is scarce 
worthy of the name, Burns possessed in a high degree. . . . 
He was emphatically a strong man ; there was, as Carlyle 
says, ' a certain rugged sterling worth about him,' which 
makes his songs as good as sermons sometimes, and sometimes 
as good as battles. . . But it is not simply fire from 

within, consuming itself in the glow of some special pet en- 
thusiasm, but it was a fire that went out contagiously and 
seized whatever fuel it might find in the motley fair of the 
largest human life. . . . Then again, the general vigor 
of mind was as notable as his vigor of body ; he was as strong 
in thought as intense in emotion." — John Stuart Blackie. 

" Who can praise them [Burns's poems] too highly, who 
admire in them too much the humor, the scorn, the wisdom, 
the unsurpassed energy and courage." — Andrew Lang. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 



<< 



A fig for those by law protected ! 

Liberty's a glorious feast ! 
Courts for cowards were erected, 

Churches built to please the priest. 
• • • • • • • 

Life is all a variorum, 

We regard not how it goes ; 
Let them cant about decorum, 

Who have characters to lose." 

— The Jolly Beggars . 



228 BURNS 

" The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
The rattling show'rs rose on the blast ; 
The speedy gleams the darkness svvallow'd ; 
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd ; 
That night, a child might understand 
The Deii had business on his hand. 



Before him doon pours all his floods ; 
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; 
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ; 
Near and more near the thunders roll." 

— Tain O' Shanter. 

u Though I canna ride in weell-booted pride, 
And flee o'er the hills like a craw, man, 
I can haud up my head wi' the best o' the breed, 
Though fluttering ever so braw, man." 

— The Tarbolton Lasses. 

4. Patriotism. — Carlyle's estimate of the value of 
Burns's songs is hardly exaggerated, and yet, though in se- 
verely straitened circumstances when he composed the most 
and the best of these songs, Burns proudly refused to accept 
any remuneration; and " he appears to have been taken at 
his word by every one concerned." Burns wrote to his 
friend Mrs. Dunlop : "Scottish scenes and Scottish stories 
are the themes I could wish to sing. I have no dearer aim 
than to have it in my power, unplagued by the routine of 
business, for which heaven knows I am unfit enough, to make 
leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields 
of her battles; to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers ; 
and to muse by the stately towers and venerable ruins over 
the honored abodes of her heroes." 

"In no heart did the love of country burn with a warmer 
glow than in that of Burns. ' A tide of Scottish prejudice,' 
as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling, ' had been 
poured along ' his veins ; and he felt that it would boil there 
until the flood-gates 'shut in eternal rest.' . . . But his 



BURNS 229 

example in the fearless adoption of domestic subjects could 
not but operate from afar. It seemed to him as if he could 
do so little for his country, and yet he would have gladly 
done all." — Carlyle. 

"He made the poorest ploughman proud of his station 
and toil, since Bobbie Burns had shared and sung them. 
He had longed from his boyhood to shed upon the 
unknown streams of his native Ayrshire some of the power 
which generations of minstrels had shed upon Yarrow and 
Tweed. Burns in his poetry was not only the interpreter of 
Scotland's peasantry, he was the restorer of her nationality. 
Among these literary men in walked Burns, who, 
with the instinct of genius, chose for his subject that Scottish 
life which they ignored and for his vehicle that vernacular 
which they despised, and who, touching the springs of long- 
forgotten emotions, brought back on the hearts of his country- 
men a tide of patriotic feeling to which they had long been 
strangers." — J. C. Shairp. 

11 His patriotism was of the true poetic kind — intense — ex- 
clusive. Scotland and the climate of Scotland were to his 
eyes the dearest in Nature — Scotland and the people of Scot- 
land were and had been such as to starve the flame of patriot- 
ism. ... A peasant appeared and set himself to check 
the creeping pestilence of this indifference. Whatever genius 
has since been devoted to the illustration of the national man- 
ners and sustaining thereby the national feeling of the people, 
there can be no doubt that Burns will be remembered as the 
founder and alas ! in his own person as the martyr of this ref- 
ormation." — -J. G. Lockhart. 

" To have recreated that national feeling, that deep and 
unquenchable patriotism which has made Scotland, small and 
poor, a force in the great universe, is no small work." — Ma- 
caulay. 

" Burns is a thorough Scotchman — the flavor of the soil can 
be tasted in everything he wrote." — Emerson. 



23O BURNS 

" The special nationality of Scotch poetry is stronger in 
Burns's poetry than in any of his predecessors, but it is also 
mingled with a larger view of man than the merely national 
one. . . . He keeps himself throughout to Scottish sub- 
jects ; his scenery is entirely Scottish, his love of liberty con- 
centrates itself round Scottish struggles ; his muse is wholly 
untravelled. . . . When the muse of Scotland appeared 
to him, she bade him sing his own people ; her mantle was 
adorned with the rivers, hills, and boroughs of Scotland, and 
in her face was the character of Scotland's poets." — Stopford 
B?'ooke. 

11 Another quality Burns possessed in an eminent degree, a 
quality which tended to make him the idol of his countrymen, 
and that was patriotism, a virtue which, as Carlyle remarks, 
was, in the days of Hume and Robertson and Blair, anything 
but common in the literary atmosphere of Scotland. 
On one point there can be no controversy, the poetry of Burns 
has had the most powerful influence in reviving and strength- 
ening the national feelings of his countrymen. Amidst pen- 
ury and labor, his youth fed on the old minstrelsy and tradi- 
tional glories of his nation, and his genius divined that what 
he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might lie smoth- 
ered around him, but could not be extinguished, and that was 
the spirit of patriotism." — -John Stuart Blackie. 

" The poor man, as he speaks of Robert Burns, always holds 
up his head and regards you with an elated look. A tender 
thought of the ' Cotter's Saturday Night ' or a bold thought 
of ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' may come across him ; 
and he who in such a spirit loves home and country, by 
whose side may he not walk an equal in the broad eye of day 
as it shines over our Scottish hills?" — Professor Wilson 
[Christopher North]. 

" Burns is, in fact, the demigod, prophet, priest, and king 
of Scotland. . . . This is, after all, the greatest of Burns's 
poetical merits — that he has Scotized poetry, . . . and 



BURNS 23I 

has drawn to him the hearts of his countrymen like the draft 
of a roaring fiery furnace." — W. M. Rossetti. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ; 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 

Be blest with health and peace and sweet content ! 

And, Oh ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 

Then, howe'er crown and coronets be rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle." 

— The Cotter s Saturday Night, 

" Wild beats my heart to brace your steps, 
Whose ancestors, in days of yore, 
Through hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps 
Old Scotia's bloody lion bore : 
Even I who sing in rustic lore, 
Haply my sires have left their shed, 

And faced grim Danger's loudest roar, 
Bold-following where your fathers led ! " 

— Address to Edinburgh. 

" Wha for Scotland's King and law 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
Free man stand, or free man fa', 
Caledonian ! on wi' me ! " — Ba7inockburn. 

5. Broad Human Sympathy — Moral Insight. — 

" No wonder the Scottish peasantry have loved Burns as per- 
haps never people loved a poet. He not only sympathized 
with the wants, the trials, the joys, the sorrows of their ob- 
scure lot, but he interpreted these to themselves, and inter- 
preted them to others, and too in their own language, made 
musical and glorified by genius. . . . What flashes of 
moral insight, piercing to the quick ! What random sayings 



232 BURNS 

flung forth that have become proverbs in all lands — mottoes 
of the heart. . . . He interpreted the lives, thoughts, 
feelings, manners of the Scottish peasantry to whom he be- 
longed, as they had never been interpreted before and never 
can be again. ... Of his instinctive knowledge of men 
of all ranks there is no need to speak, for every line attests it. 
Of his songs, one main characteristic is that their 
subjects, the substance they lay hold of, belongs to what is 
most permanent in humanity — those primary affections, those 
permanent relations of life which cannot change while man's 
nature remains what it is. In this they are wholly unlike the 
songs which seize on the changing aspects of society. 
Happy as a singer Burns was in this, that his own strong nat- 
ure, his birth, and all his circumstances, conspired to fix his 
interest on the primary and permanent affections, the great 
fundamental relations of life, which men have always with 
them — not on the social conventions and ephemeral modes, 
which are here to-day, forgotten in the next generation. 

. . Burns's sympathy and thoughts were not confined 
to class and country ; they had something more catholic in 
them, they reached to universal man." — J. C. Shairp. 

"All his religion, he says, came from the heart; and it 
drove him — when he thought of this poor people and their 
hard lives, and how beautiful they often were with maternal 
feeling ; when he thought how much they suffered and how 
much was due to them, to refer the origin of their good to 
God and to leave the righting of their wrongs to God. 
Being thus himself poor . . . and having in him . 
a heart to love and enjoy all beauty and to feel all that was hu- 
man, and being insensibly influenced by the spirit of the time, 
he threw into the tender and humorous song the sorrows and 
affections of his own class, their religion and their passions, 
their amusements and their toil, till all the world laughed and 
wept with the Ayrshire ploughman." — Stopford Brooke 

" He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make 



BURNS 233 

us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers 
and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, 
to make us enter with them into their passions and interests 
and share our hearts with them as with brothers and sisters of 
the same species." — Thomas Campbell. 

"But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother 
men ! What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling ; what 
trustful, boundless love ; that generous exaggeration of the 
object loved ! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are 
no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen whom 
he prizes as the paragons of Earth. . . . And thus over 
the lowest provinces of man's existence he pours the glory 
of his own soul. ... In hut and in hall as the heart 
unfolds itself in the many-colored joy and woe of existence, 
the name, the voice of that joy and woe is the name and 
the voice which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking, 
perhaps no [other] British man has so deeply affected the 
thoughts and feelings of so many men as this solitary and 
altogether private individual, with means apparently the hum- 
blest. . . . We see in him the gentleness, the trembling 
pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and pas- 
sionate ardor of a hero. . . . He has a resonance in his 
bosom for every note of human feeling ; the high and the low, 
the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns 
to his lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit." — Carlyle. 

" What a gust of sympathy there is in him, sometimes flow- 
ing out in by-ways hitherto unused, upon mice, flowers, and 
the Devil himself; sometimes speaking plainly between hu- 
man hearts ; sometimes ringing out in exultation like a peal 
of bells ! " — Robert Louis Stevenson. 

" But still the music of his song 
Rises o' er all elate and strong ; 

Its master-chords 
Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood." 

— Longfellow. 



234 BURNS 

11 We praise him not for gifts divine, 
His muse was born of woman, 
His manhood breathes in every line — 
Was ever heart more human ? 

We love him, praise him, just for this : 

In every form and feature, 
Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, 

He saw his fellow-creature." 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" But who his human heart has laid 
To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
Who sweetened toil like him, repaid 
To love a tribute dearer ? 

Through all his tuneful art, how strong 

The human feeling gushes ! 
The very moonlight of his song 

Is warm with smiles and blushes ! " — Whittier. 

" He is a human creature, only overflowing with the char- 
acteristics of humanity. To him belong, in large measure, 
the passions and the powers of his race. He professes no 
exemption from the common lot. . . . * Rarely and richly 
were mingled in him the elements of human nature. His 
crowning distinction is a larger soul ; and this he carried into 
all things." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" Burns had as deep an insight as ever man had into the 
moral evils of the poor man's character, condition, and life. 
Not an occurrence in hamlet, village, or town, 
affecting in any way the happiness of the human heart, but 
roused as keen an interest in the soul of Burns and as genial a 
sympathy as if it had immediately concerned himself and his 
own individual welfare. . . . No poet ever lived more 
constantly and more intimately in the hearts of a people. 
There is no other writer except Shakespeare who 



BURNS 235 

shares to the same extent, notwithstanding he wrote in a pro- 
vincial dialect, a like universal sympathy or the same uni- 
versal appreciation." — -James Grant Wilson. 

44 It is that language of the heart 

In which the answering heart would speak, 
Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, 
Or the smile light the cheek : 

And his that music to whose tone 

The common pulse of man keeps time, 

In cot or castle's mirth or moan, 

In cold or sunny clime." — Fitz- Greene Halleck. 

" Burns has made his appearance to convince the loftiest 
of the noble and the daintiest of the learned, that wherever 
human nature is at work, the eye of the poet may discover 
rich elements of his art ; that over Christian Europe, at all 
events, purity of sentiment and the fervor of passion may be 
combined with sagacity of intellect, with shrewdness, humor, 
and whatever elevates and delights the mind ; not more easily 
amidst the most complicated transactions of the most polished 
societies than in his 'huts where poor men lie.'" — J. G. 
Lockhart. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister Woman ; 
Tho' they may gang a kennie [trifle] wrang, 

To step aside is human : 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving Why they do it ; 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far, perhaps, they rue it. 

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us, 
He knows each chord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias : 



236 BURNS 

Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

— Address to the Unco Guid. 

" To lie in kilns and barns at e'en, 

When banes are crazed and bluid is thin, 

Is doubtless great distress ! 
Yet then content could make us blest ; 
E'en then sometimes we'd snatch a taste 

Of truest happiness. 
The honest heart that's free frae a' 

Intended fraud or guile, 
However Fortune kick the ba' 

Has aye some cause to smile." 

— Epistle to Davie. 

" I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, 
An' mony a time my heart's been wae, 
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
How they mon thole a factor's snash : 



I see how folks live that hae riches ; 

But surely poor folks maun be wretches." 

— The Twa Dogs. 

6. Scorn — Indignation — Ridicule. — This most pow- 
erful weapon in the hands of Burns was generally directed 
against the cant and hypocrisy which his honest eyes saw too 
clearly in all the ways of men and especially against hypocrisy 
in religion. 

" The indignation which makes verses, is, properly speak- 
ing, an inverted love ; the love of some right, some worth, 
some goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has 
been injured and which this tempestuous feeling issues forth 
to defend and avenge. ... Of the verses which indig- 
nation makes, Burns has given us among the best that were 
ever given." — Carlyle. 



BURNS 237 

" Since Voltaire, no literary man in religious matters was 
more bitter or more jocose. . . . What he made fun of 
was official worship; but as for religion, the language of the 
soul, he was greatly attached to it." — Taine. 

" But never since bright earth was born 
In rapture of the enkindling morn, 
Might god-like wrath and sinlike scorn, 

That was and is 
And shall be while false weeds are worn, 
Find words like his." 

— A. C. Swinburne. 

" Not Latimer nor Luther struck more telling blows against 
false theology than did this brave singer. . . . His satire 
has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through 
the air." — Emerson. 

" The first peculiarity is the undisciplined harshness and 
acrimony of his invective. . . . His epigrams and lam- 
poons appear to us, one and all, unworthy of him, offensive 
from their extreme coarseness and violence, and contemptible 
from their want of wit and brilliancy. They seem to have 
been written not out of fierce and ungovernable anger. His 
whole raillery consists in railing; and his satirical vein dis- 
plays itself chiefly in calling names and swearing. We say 
this mainly with reference to his personalities. In many of 
his more general representations of life and manners, there is 
no doubt much that may be called satirical, mixed up with 
admirable humor and description of inimitable vivacity." — 
Francis Jeffrey. 

" Insincerity and pretension completely disgusted him. 
Scarcely does he betray the slightest impatience with his fel- 
lows, except in expressing and ridiculing these traits. ' Holy 
Willie's Prayer ' and a few similar effusions were penned as 
protests against bigotry and presumption." — H. T. Tucker- 
man. 

" The vigor of his satire, the severity of illustration with 



238 BURNS 

which his fancy instantly supplied him, bore down all retort.'* 
— Sir Walter Scott. 

11 Burns possessed great force as a satirist, for a satirist of 
the most pungent order unquestionably he was — too much, in 
fact, for his own peaceable march through life, . . . but 
not too much for public correction and reproof when, as in 
the case of ' Holy Willie ' and ' The Holy Fair,' the lash was 
wisely and effectively wielded. ... In connection with 
his power of seizing the striking features of character, must be 
mentioned his tremendous force as a satirist." — -John Stuart 
Blackie. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Hear how he clears the points o' faith 
Wi' rattlin' an' wi' thumpin' ! 
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, 

He's stampin' and he's jumpin' ! 
His lengthened chin, his turned up snout, 

His eldritch [unearthly] squeal an' gestures, 
O how they fire the heart devout, 
Like cantharidian plasters, 
On sic a day ! 

A vast, unbottomed, boundless pit, 

Fill'd fou [full] o' lowin [flaming] brunstane [brimstone], 
Wha's raging flame an' scorching heat, 

Wad melt the hardest whunstane [whinstone] 1 
The half asleep start up wi' fear, 

An' think they hear it roarin', 
When presently it does appear 

'Twas but some neebor snorin', 
Asleep that day. 

How monie hearts this day converts 

O' sinners an' o' lasses ! 
Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane 

As saft as on'y flesh is. 
There's some are fou o' love divine, 

There's some are fou o' brandy," &c. — The Holy Fair. 



BURNS 239 

" When frae my mither's womb I fell, 
Thou might hae plunged me into Hell, 
To gnash my gums, to weep and wail, 

In burnin' lake, 
Where damned devils roar and yell, 
Chain'd to a stake." 

— Holy Willie's Prayer. 

" He fine a mangy sheep could scrub, 
Or nobly fling the gospel club, 
And New-light herds could nicely drub, 

Or pay their skin ; 
Could shake them ower the burning dub [pit] 

Or heave them in." — The Twa Herds. 

7. Picturesqueness — Descriptive Power. — "No 

poet of any age or nation is more graphic than Burns : the 
characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance. 
Three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. And in 
that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear 
and definite a likeness ! It seems a draughtsman working 
with a burnt stick ; and yet the burning of a Retzch is not 
more expressive or exact. . . . It is reverence, it is love 
towards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its 
beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise." 
— Carlyle. 

" For all aspects of the natural world he has the same clear 
eye, the same open heart that he has for man. His love of 
nature is intense, but very simple and direct ; no subtilizings 
nor refinings about it, nor any of that nature-worship which 
soon after his time came in. . . . Everywhere in his 
poetry nature comes in, not so much as a being indepen- 
dent of man but as the background of his pictures of life 
and human character. ... In ' Halloween ' he has 
sketched the Ayrshire peasantry as they appeared in their 
hours of merriment — painted with a few vivid strokes a dozen 
distinct pictures of country lads and lasses, sires and dames, 



24O BURNS 

and at the same time preserved forever the remembrance of 
the antique customs and superstitious observances, which, 
even in Burns's day, were beginning to fade, and have now 
all but disappeared. . . . How true his perceptions of 
her [Nature's] features are, how pure and transparent the 
feelings she awakens in him! . . . Scottish Lowland 
scenery is never so truly and vividly described as when Burns 
uses his own vernacular. . . . Everywhere with him 
man, his feelings and his fate, stand out in the front of his 
pictures, and Nature comes in as the delightful background 
— yet Nature loved with a love, beheld with a rapture, all the 
more genuine because his pulses throbbed in such intense 
sympathy with man. Every reader can recall many a won- 
derful line, sometimes a whole verse in his love-songs, in which 
the surrounding landscape is flashed on the mind's eye." 
— -J. C. Shairp. 

" He has in all his compositions great force of conception 
and great spirit and animation in its expression. He has 
taken a large range through the region of Fancy, and natu- 
ralized himself in almost all her climates. He has 
great powers of description. There is another fragment, also, 
called ' Vision,' which belongs to a higher order of poetry. 
If Burns had never written anything else, the power of 
description and the vigor of the whole composition would 
have entitled him to the remembrance of posterity." — 
Francis Jeffrey. 

" Touched by his hand, the way-side weed 
Becomes a flower ; the lowliest reed 

Beside the stream 
Is clothed with beauty ; gorse and grass 
And heather, where his footsteps pass, 
The brighter seem." — Longfellow. 

" The dialect of Burns was fitted to deal with any subject ; 
and whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a 
sheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly 



BURNS 241 

soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a drunken 
man, or only a village cock-crow in the morning, he could 
find language to give it freshness, body, and relief." — Robert 
Louis Stevenson. 

" He could describe with admirable fidelity and force inci- 
dents, scenes, manners, characters, or whatever else, which had 
fallen within his experience or observation." — G. L. Craik. 

" His page is a lively image of the contemporary life and 
country from which he sprung." — T/iomas Campbell. 

" But within the range, it [his description] is perfect; it 
is never exaggerated, nothing is forced or over-dwelt on ; it is 
the natural and swift reproduction of the landscape, and all 
that is said sounds sweetly and smells sweetly to the sense." 
. — Stopford Brooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Admiring Nature in her wildest grace 
These northern scenes with weary feet I trace ; 
O'er many a winding dale and painful steep, 
Th' abodes of covered grouse and timid sheep, 
My savage journey, curious, I pursue. 
Till famed Breadalbane opens to my view — 
The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides, 
The woods, wild-scattered, clothe their ample sides; 
Th' outstretching lake embosomed 'mong the hills, 
The eye with wonder and amazement fills ; 
The Tay meandering sweet in infant pride, 
The palace rising on its verdant side ; 
The lawns wood-fringed in Nature's native taste, 
The hillocks dropt in Nature's careless haste ; 
The arches striding o'er the new-born stream ; 
The village glittering in the noontide beam ! " 

— Writte?i with a Pencil \ Etc. 

u November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ; 
The short'ning winter day is near a close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the plugh ; 
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose 
16 



242 BURNS 

The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes, 
This night his weekly moil is at an end, 

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend ! " 

— The Cotter's Saturday Night. 

" Upon a summer Sunday morn, 
When Nature's face is fair, 
I walked forth to view the corn, 

And snuff the cooler air. 
The risin' sun o'er Galston muirs 
Wi' glorious light was glintin ; 
The hares were hirplin down the furs, 
The lav'rocks they were chantin." 

— Fu y Sweet That Day. 

8. Kindly Humor — Sportiveness. — Unlike most writ- 
ers, Burns has equal command of both extremes of satire — 
of the kind that stings (already noticed) and the kind that 
excites only a good-natured smile. 

"Under a lighter characteristic, the same principle of 
love, which we have recognized as the great characteristic of 
Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself in the 
shape of humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a 
full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through the mind of Burns ; 
he rises to the high and stoops to the low, and is brother and 
playmate to all caricature; for this is drollery rather than 
humor ; but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him, and 
comes forth, here and there, in evanescent and beautiful 
touches. ... As in his ' Address to the Mouse,' or 
the ' Farmer's Mare,' or in his 'Elegy on Poor Mailie,' 
which last may be reckoned as his happiest effort of this 
kind. In these pieces there are traits of a humor as fine as 
that of Sterne ; yet altogether different, original, peculiar 
— the humor of Burns." — Carlyle. 

"He has genuine gaiety, a glow of jocularity ; laughter 
commends itself to him ; he praises it as well as good suppers 



BURNS 243 

of good comrades, where wine is plentiful, pleasantry abounds, 
ideas pour forth, poetry sparkles, and causes a carnival of 
beautiful figures and good-humored people to move about in 
the human brain." — Taine. 

"It was in the humorous, the comic, the satirical, that he 
first tried and proved his strength. Exulting to find that a 
rush of words was ready at his will — that no sooner flashed 
his fancies than on the instant they were embodied, he wan- 
toned and revelled among the subjects that had always seemed 
to him the most risible, whatever the kind of laughter, simple 
or compound — pure mirth or a mixture of mirth and con- 
tempt, even of indignation and scorn — mirth still being the 
chief ingredient that qualifies the whole." — Professor Wilson. 

"Where is the wooing-match that for pointed humor and 
drollery can compare with that of Duncan Gray, when ' Meg 
was deaf as Culsa Craig,' and Duncan ' spak o' lowpin o'er 
him ' ? These are lines that for happy humor none but Burns 
could have hit off." — J. C. Shairp. 

" His humor comes from him in a stream so deep and easy 
that I will venture to call him the best of humorous poets." 
— Robert Louis Stevenson. 

" Such a collection of humorous lyrics, connected by vivid 
poetical descriptions, is not perhaps to be paralleled in the 
English language." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" One notable feature in his genius — a feature which has 
not seldom been wanting in the greatest of minds — is humor, 
a certain sportive fence of the soul delighting in the significant 
conjunction of contraries, a quality peculiarly Scotch, and 
which in Scotchmen seems a counterpoise graciously provided 
by Nature to that overcharge of thought — fulness and serious- 
ness, which so strikingly contrasts them with their Hibernian 
cousins across the channel." — -John Stuart Blackie. 



244 BURNS 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" For Lords or Kings I dinna mourn, 
E'en let them die — for that they're born : 
But oh ! prodigious to reflec' ! 

A Towmont [Twelvemonth], Sirs, is gane to wreck! 
O Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space 
What dire events hae taken place ! 
Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us ! 
In what a pickle thou hast left us ! 
The Spanish empire's tint [lostj a head, 
And my auld teethless Bawtie's dead ! 
The tulzie's [quarrel] sair 'tween Pitt an' Fox, 
An' 'tween our Maggie's twa wee cocks." 

— Elegy on the Year ij88. 

" As ye gae up by yon hillside, 
Speer in for bonny Bessy, 
She'll gae ye a beck, and bid ye licht, 
And handsomely address ye. 
There's few sae bonnie, nane sae guid, 
In a' king George's dominion ; 
If ye should doubt the truth of this — 
It's Bessy's ain opinion." — The Tarbolton Lasses. 

11 I wadna been surprised to spy 

You on an auld wife's flainen toy [flannel cap] : 
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, 

On's wyliecoat [flannel waistcoat] ; 
But Miss's fine Lunardi ! fie ! 

How dare ye do 't ? " 

— To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet. 

9. Warmth Of Affection.—" He is a man of the most 
impassioned temper j with passions not strong only but noble, 
and of the sort in which great virtues and great poems take 
their rise. . . . What warm, all-comprehending fellow- 
feeling ; what trustful, boundless love ; what generous exag- 
geration of the object loved ! His rustic friend, his nut- 



BURNS * 245 

brown maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but a hero 
and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of the earth. 

Poetry is indeed his companion, but Love also, and 
Courage ; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that 
dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his 
heart. . . . And so kind and warm a soul; so full of in- 
born riches, of love to all living and lifeless things." — Carlyle. 
" The earliest poem he composed was in his seventeenth 
summer; a simple love-song in praise of a girl who was his 
companion in the harvest field. The last strain he breathed was 
from his death-bed in remembrance of some former affection. 

He had a compassionate sympathy for the old name- 
less song-makers of his country, lying in their unknown graves, 
all Scotland over. . . . And then his humanity was not 
confined to man, it overflowed to his lower fellow-creatures. 
His lines about the pet ewe, the worn-out mare, the field- 
mouse, the wounded hare, have long been household words. 
Observe the peculiar intensity of his nature, the fervid heart, 
the trembling sensibility, the headlong passion, all thrilling 
through an intellect strong and keen beyond that of other 
men." — J. C. Shairp. 

" He was always in love. He made love the great end of 
existence to such a degree, that at the club which he founded 
. . . every member was obliged to be the declared lover 
of one or more fair ones." — Taine. 

" He sings of love, whose flame illumines 

The darkness of lone cottage rooms : 
He feels the force, 

The treacherous undertone and stress, 

Of wayward passions, and no less 

The keen remorse." — Longfellow. 
"It is true that his love of Nature was always linked with 
some vehement or some sweet affection for living creatures, and 
that it was for the sake of the humanity that she cherishes in her 
bosom that she was dear to him as his own life blood. 



246 BURNS 

In nothing else is the sincerity of his soul more apparent than 
in his friendships ; all who had ever been kind to him he 
loved to the last. . . . Ay, for many a deep reason the 
Scottish people love their own Robert Burns. Never was the 
personal character of a poet so strongly and endearingly ex- 
hibited in his song. They love him because he loved his 
own order, nor ever desired for a single moment to quit it. 
They love him because he loved the very humblest condition 
of humanity, where everything good was only the more com- 
mended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social posi- 
tion." — Professor Wilson [Christopher North]. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The day returns, my bosom burns, 
The blissful day we twa did meet, 
Tho' winter wild in tempest toil'd, 
Ne'er summer sun was half sae sweet. 
Than a' the pride that loads the tide, 
And crosses o'er the sultry line ; 
Than kingly robes, than crowns and globes ; — 
Heaven gave me more, it made thee mine." 

— The Blissful Day. 

" All hail, ye tender feelings dear ! 
The smile of love, the friendly tear, 
The sympathetic glow ! 
Long since, this world's thorny ways 
Had number'd out my weary days, 
Had it not been for you ! 
Fate still has blest me with a friend, 
In every care and ill." — Epistle to Davie. 



a 



But round my heart the ties are bound, 
That heart transpierc'd with many a wound: 
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear, 
To leave the bonny banks of Ayr. 



BURNS 247 

Farewell, my friends ! Farewell, my foes ! 
My peace with these, my love with those — 
The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
Farewell, the bonny banks of Ayr." 

— The Author's Farewell to His Native Country. 



10. Conviviality — Coarseness — Sensuality. — 

Those critics who are disposed to "cast the first stone" at 
Burns find, alas ! abundant justification in his poems. Those 
who, like Burns, are disposed to " gently scan your brother 
man," will exclaim with Principal Shairp : " How mysterious 
to reflect that the same qualities on their emotional side made 
him the great songster of the world, and on their practical 
side drove him to ruin!" All Burns' s critics agree that 
much of the coarseness in the poet's writing is due to the un- 
fortunate influence of that coterie of " heavy country wits " 
in the village of Mauchline who admitted Burns to their 
choice circle and thus gave him his first " rise in the world." 
Prior to the time of his entrance into this circle, there was 
little in Burns's verses to call for reproach. The applause and 
the stimulus of these cronies must be recognized as the cause 
of much of what we most regret in the poet's life and work. 
Illustrations of this quality of Burns are too plentiful to need 
citing. His two masterpieces, "The Jolly Beggars" and 
"Tarn o' Shanter," afford abundant specimens. 

" The poems and even some of the songs of Burns are not 

free from grossness, which he himself regretted to the last. 

In ' The Jolly Beggars,' . . . the materials are 

so coarse and the sentiment so gross as to make it, for all its 

dramatic power, offensive." — J. C. Shairp. 

"The leading vice in Burns's character, and the cardi- 
nal deformity, indeed, of all his productions, was his con- 
tempt, or affectation of contempt, for prudence, decency, 
and regularity. . . . This is the very slang of the 
worst German plays and the lowest of our town-made 



248 BURNS 

novels; nor can anything be more lamentable than that it 
should have found a patron in such a man as Burns and com- 
municated to many of his productions a character of immor- 
ality, at once contemptible and hateful. . . . It is humili- 
ating to think how deeply Burns has fallen into this debasing 
error. He is perpetually making a parade of his thought- 
lessness, inflammability, and impudence, and talking, with 
much complacency and exultation, of the offence he has oc- 
casioned to the sober and correct part of mankind." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

" He carried conviviality to an excess, violated his own 
principles of virtue, and grafted license upon love." — Henry 
Ward Beecher. 

" You [Burns] combined in certain of your letters a liber- 
tine theory with your practice, you poured out in your song 
and raptures your shame and your scorn." — Andrew Lang. 

"Burns was as free of action as he was of words; broad 
jests crop up freely in his verses. He calls himself an unre- 
generate heathen, and he is right. ... It seems to me 
that by his nature he was in love with all women. 
It was the excess of sap which overflowed within him and 
soiled the bark. Doubtless he did not boast of these ex- 
cesses, he rather repented of them." — Taine. 

"Burns could hardly have described the excesses of mad, 
hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial indulgence, which 
is the soul of it, if he himself had not ' drunk full oftener of 
the tun than of the well.' " — William Hazlitt. 

" To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making 
man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own 
life was not given. Destiny — for so in our ignorance we 
must speak — his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard 
for him ; and that spirit which might have soared, could it 
but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties 
trodden under foot in the blossom, and died, we may almost 
say, without ever having lived." — Carlyle. 



BURNS 249 

''The magic of that countenance, making Burns at once 
tempter and tempted, may explain many a sad story." — 
Charles Kingsley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" No churchman am I for to rail and to write, 
No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight, 
No sly man of business contriving a snare, 
For a big-bellie'd bottle 's the whole of my care. 

The peer I don't envy, I give him his bow ; 
I scorn not the peasant though ever so low ; 
But a club of good fellows like those that are here, 
And a bottle like this, are my glory and care." 

— The Big- Bellied Bottle. 

" Let other poets raise a fracas 

'Bout vines an 1 wines, an' drunken Bacchus 
An' crabbit names and stories wrack us, 

An' grate our lug [earj, 
I sing the juice Scots bear can mak us, 

In glass or jug." — Scotch Drink. 

11 What is title ? what is treasure ? 
What is reputation's care ? 
If we lead a life of pleasure, 
'Tis no matter how or where ! 

With the ready trick and fable, 

Round we wander all the day ; 
And at night in barn or stable, 

Hug our doxies in the hay. 

Does the train-attended carriage 
Through the country lighter rove ? 

Does the sober bed of marriage 
Witness brighter scenes of love ? " 

— The Jolly Beggars. 

II. Sublimity. — '.' Burns is one of those men who reach 
down to the perennial deeps, who take rank among the heroic 
men. He was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest 



250 BURNS 

soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a 
hard-handed Scotch peasant. . . . The ' hoar visage ' 
of winter delights him ; he dwells with a sad and often-re- 
turning fondness on these scenes of solemn desolation ; but 
the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears ; he 
loves to walk in the sounding woods, for ' it raises his thoughts 
to him that walketh on the wings of the wind.' ... In 
his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a mo- 
ment the majesty of poetry and manhood. . . . But 
some beams from it [Burns's genius] did, by fits, pierce 
through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient 
colors into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently 
gaze on with wonder and tears." — Carlyle. 

" It ['The Cotter's Saturday Night 'J is a noble and pathetic 
picture of human manners mingled with a fine religious awe. 
It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of 
music. Repeatedly, in Burns's poems, we find touches of 
what the poet himself so finely calls ' the pathos and sub- 
lime of human life.' " — William Hazlitt. 

" He rises occasionally into a strain of beautiful description 
or lofty sentiment, far above the pitch of his original concep- 
tion." — Francis Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

u The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast, 
The joyless winter day, 
Let others fear, to me more dear 
Than all the pride of May: 
The tempest's howl it soothes my soul, 
My griefs it seems to join: 
The leafless trees my fancy please, 
Their fate resembles mine." — Winter. 



u 



O Thou, great Governor of all below ! 

If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, 
Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 

And still the tumult of the raging sea: 



BURNS 251 

With that controlling power assist even me 
Those headlong furious passions to confine, 

For all unfit I feel my power to be 

To rule their torrent in the allowed line: 
Oh, aid me with Thy help, omnipotence Divine." 
— Stanzas on the Prospect of Death. 



a 



Ye holy walls that, still sublime, 
Resist the crumbling touch of time, 
How strongly still your form displays 
The piety of ancient days ! 
As through your ruins, hoar and gray- 
Ruins yet beauteous in decay — 
The silvery moonbeams trembling fly, 
The forms of ages long gone by 
Crowd thick on Fancy's wondering eye, 
And wake the soul to musings high." 

— Verses on the Ruins of Lincluden Abbey. 



COWPER, 1731-1800 

Biographical Outline. — William Cowper, bom at 
Great Berkhampstead, November 26, 1731 ; father a clergy- 
man and at one time chaplain to George II. ; mother related 
to the poet Donne and descended indirectly from Henry II. ; 
loses his mother at the age of six, a loss from which he never 
recovered ; he is exceedingly timid and sensitive even as a 
child ; soon after his mother's death Cowper is placed in the 
school of one Dr. Pitman, in Market Street, Hertfordshire, 
where he is abused and bullied by the older and stronger 
boys; he is removed from Dr. Pitman's school on account 
of inflammation of the eyes, caused, it is said, by excessive 
weeping, and is placed for two years in the home of an ocu- 
list ; in 1 741 he is placed in Westminster School, where he 
takes part in athletic sports and is less miserable than at 
Market Street ; he studies Latin at Westminster under Vin- 
cent Bourne, to whom Cowper becomes attached ; he be- 
comes a good Latin scholar, and reads the " Iliad " and the 
" Odyssey " outside of school hours with a friend ; he has 
Warren Hastings as a school-mate at Westminster ; he writes 
his first poem, an imitation of Phillips's "Splendid Shil- 
ling," and helps his brother John, at Cambridge, to trans- 
late the " Henriade " in 1748, while still at Westminster ; he 
leaves Westminster in 1748, spends nine months at his home 
in Great Berkhampstead, and is articled, in 1749, to one 
Chapman, a London attorney, with whom he remains three 
years, completing his articles ; while in London Cowper fre- 
quently visits the home of his uncle, Ashley Cowper, with 
whose daughter Theodora he falls in love, and addresses to 

252 



COWPER 253 

her many of his early poems under the name of " Delia ;" 
he takes chambers in the Middle Temple in 1752, and is called 
to the bar in 1754, but never practices, having studied law 
merely to please his father ; he gives his time to literature, and 
becomes a member of the "Nonsense Club," a group of 
seven Westminster men interested in literature and journalism, 
among whom were Bonnell Thornton, Coleman, and Lloyd ; 
he associates also with Churchill, Wilkes, and Hogarth; he 
is refused the hand of his cousin by her father, though she 
remains single and faithful to Cowper till her death ; he 
loses his father in 1752, but is not much affected by the loss, 
he receives a small patrimony from his father ; he secures a 
position as Commissioner of Bankrupts, which brings him 
£60 per annum, and, in 1759, removes to the Inner 
Temple ; through the influence of his cousin, Major Cowper, 
Cowper is offered first the office of Reading Clerk and Clerk 
of Committees in the House of Lords and then that of Clerk 
of the Journals ; Cowper accepts both, successively, and fails 
to appear in each case because of diffidence as to reading in 
public and fear of inability to pass the examination required 
for the second position ; he becomes exceedingly nervous 
and a victim to hypochondria ; he convinces himself that 
suicide is lawful, and makes preparations to take his life sev- 
eral times, but shrinks at the last moment ; he finally tries to 
hang himself, and is apparently prevented only by the break- 
ing of the garter that he has used for a noose ; he is seized 
with religious horrors, and becomes so completely insane that 
he is placed, in 1763, in the private asylum of one Dr. 
Cotton, at St. Albans ; after remaining eighteen months in 
the asylum, Cowper is discharged, having been restored, as he 
believed, through divine faith ; he celebrates his deliverance 
in the poem "The Happy Change; " he is assisted finan- 
cially by friends, and goes, in 1765, to reside in Hunting- 
don, where he meets Mrs. Unwin, the " Mary " of his 
poems ; he maintains a servant and an outcast boy, both 



254 COWPER 

brought with him from St. Albans; he takes up his residence 
with the Unwins, who care for him tenderly; after Mr. Un- 
win's death, in 1767, he goes with Mrs. Unwin to reside at 
Olney, where Cowper comes under the influence of the Rev. 
John Newton ; the religious life of Cowper and 1 a Unwins 
is so strict and regular that they are called " Metric ^ists ; " 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin become near neighbors to Nc Tr ton, 
and enter on " a decided course of religious happiness; " at 
Newton's suggestion Cowper begins the " Olney Hymns; " 
under the ascetic life recommended by Newton, aggravated 
by the death of his brother, Cowper becomes again insane in 
1773, fancies himself rejected of Heaven, etc., and is slowly 
nursed back to reason by Mrs. Unwin ; he begins to domesti- 
cate hares, and, at Mrs. Unwin's suggestion, in 1780, begins 
to write poetry, as furnishing congenial occupation for his 
mind; Mrs. Unwin suggests the theme "The Progress of 
Error," and within the year Cowper writes the poem of that 
title together with "Truth," "Table-Talk," and "Expos- 
tulation ; " in 1 78 1 he meets Lady Austen, who suggests to 
him the composition of " The Task," which Cowper begins in 
1783 and publishes in 1785 ; " The Task " is successful and 
wins public recognition; after completing "The Task" 
he writes " The Loss of the Royal George," " The Solitude of 
Alexander Selkirk," "The Poplar Field," "The Shrub- 
bery," "The Needless Alarm," etc.; in 1784, at Lady 
Austen's suggestion, Cowper begins his translation of Homer, 
which he publishes in 1791 ; he hears the story of "John 
Gilpin " from Lady Austen while winding her thread, and 
writes the ballad at a single sitting; he becomes estranged 
from Lady Austen in 1785 through her dislike of a certain 
"lecture" in one of Cowper's letters ; he becomes again 
insane in 1791 and again attempts suicide; Lady Austen's 
place is supplied by Cowper's cousin, Lady Hesketh ; Cow- 
per's health becomes shattered by recourse to medical em- 
piricism ; he removes, in 1786, with Mrs. Unwin, to Wes- 



COWPER 255 

ton ; Mrs. Unwin's faculties become affected, and both are 
received into the home of the poet Hay ley at Eartham ; they 
soon return to Weston, where Cowper becomes again insane 
and again attempts suicide ; Hayley and other friends remove 
them to Mundsley, in Norfolk, thence to Dunham Lodge, 
near Swaffham, and finally to East Dereham, where Mrs. Un- 
win dies in 1799 ; soon afterward Cowper recovers his facul- 
ties sufficiently to write " The Castaway," then sinks into a 
state of utter dejection, and dies at East Dereham, April 27, 
1800. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON COWPER. 

Sainte-Beuve, C. A., "English Portraits." New York, 1875, Holt, 

164-238. 
Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 3: 

208-241. 
Cheever, G. B., " Lectures on the Life, etc., of Cowper." New York, 

1856, R. Carter, v. index. 
Birrell, A., " Res Judicata." New York, 1892, Scribner, 81-114. 
Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 

Gosse, E., "A History of Eighteenth Century Literature." London, 

1889, Macmillan, 325. 
Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, 

Whittaker, 125-169. 
Rossetti, W., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 177- 

188. 
Sainte-Beuve, C. A., " Causeries de Lundi." Paris, 1850, Graniere 

Freres, 1 1 : 139-197. 
Woodberry, G. E., " Studies in Literature." Boston, 1891, Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co., 219-227. 
Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 

1 : 478-480 and 3: 155. 
Howitt. Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 

1847, Harper, 442-468. 
Smith, Goldwin, " English Men of Letters." New York, 1880, Har- 
per, v. index. 



256 COWPER 

Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 

Macmillan, I : 13-82. 
Collier, W. F., " History of English Literature." London, 1892, Nel- 
son, 379-385. 
McMahon, A. B., "Best Letters of Cowper." Chicago, 1893, McClurg, 

v. index. 
Wright, T., " Life of Cowper." London, 1892, Unwin, v. index. 
Cowper, \V., Poems, with Life, by Chalmers," London, 1870. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 

I : 321-328. 
Taine, H. A., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

3: 62-67. 
Ward, T. IL, " English Poets." New York, 1881, Macmillan, 3 : 62-67. 
Cowper, W., "Private Correspondence." London, 1824, H. Colburn, 2 

vols., 217-225. 
Dawson, G., "Biographical Lectures." London, Kegan Paul, French 

& Co., 1880, 217-224 
Browning, Mrs. E. B., "Poetical Works." New York, 1862, Miller, 

73-74- 

Southey, R., " Life of Cowper." London, 1853, Bohu, v. index. 

Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875. 

Tuckerman, H. T., " Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1851. 

Haley, W., "The Life and Posthumous Writings of Cowper." Lon- 
don, 1886, J. Seagrave, 2 vols., v. index. 

Canadian Monthly, 4: 213-220 (Goldwin Smith). 

Chautauquan, 15 : 402-407 (J. V. Cheney). 

Nation, 39: 57-58 (G. E. Woodberry). 

North American Review, 44 : 29-55 (E- T. Channingh 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Minute Descriptive Power.— "It is these indoor 
scenes, this common world, this ' gentle round of calm de- 
lights,' the petty detail of quiet relaxation, that Cowper ex- 
cels in. The post-boy, the winter's evening, the newspaper, 
the knitting needles, the stockings, these are his subjects. 
These sketches have the highest merit, suitableness of style." 
— Walter Bagehot. 



COWPER 257 

" The pleasures of the country and of home, the walk, the 
garden, but above all the ' intimate delights ' of the winter 
evening, the snug parlor, with its close-drawn curtains shut- 
ting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea- 
urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper, 
through which we look out into the unquiet world, are 
painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment which in- 
fects the reader." — Goldwin Smith. 

" The very foundation of his poetry is his close observation 
of men and things; the close observation that fills his letters 
with happily touched incidents of village life, with characters 
sketched in a sentence, furnishes the groundwork of ' The 
Task ' and the Satires. The snow-covered fields, the wagon 
toiling through the drifts, the distant plough slow-moving, 
the garden, the fireside, the gypsies, the village thief, the 
clerical coxcomb, of all these he gives not only finished pict- 
ures but pictures finished in the presence of the object and 
not in the studio." — T. H. Ward. 

" Cowper possessed in a high degree the art of noting par- 
ticular traits and curious details of things ; he was almost 
minutely exact. ... In his ' Winter Walk at Noon ' he 
produced an exquisitely painted picture and one that was 
finished, living, and natural." — Sainte-Beuve . 

"Impressions small to us were great to him; and in a 
room, a garden, he found the world. . . . He discovers 
a beauty and harmony in the coals of a sparkling fire, in the 
movement of fingers over a piece of wool-work. 
Nature is to him like a gallery of splendid and various 
pictures, which to us ordinary folk are always covered up 
with cloths. Such is the new truth which Cowper's poems 
brought to light. . . . We may find poetry, if we wish, 
at our fireside and among the beds of our kitchen garden." 
— Taine. 



17 






258 COWPER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Now roves the eye, 
And, posted on this speculative height, 
Exults in its command. The sheepfold here 
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
At first, progressive as a stream, they seek 
The middle field ; but, scatter'd by degrees, 
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
There from the sun-burnt hayfield homeward creeps 
The loaded wain ; while, lighten'd of its charge, 
The wain that meets it passes swiftly by, 
The boorish driver leaning o'er his team, 
Vociferous, impatient of delay. 
Nor less attractive is the woodland scene, 
Diversified with trees of every growth, 
Alike yet various. Here the gray, smooth trunks 
Of ash or lime or beech distinctly shine 
Within the twilight of their distant shades; 
There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood 
Seems sunk and shorten'd to its topmost boughs." 

— The Task. 

11 Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups 
That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 

But here the needle plies its busy task, 

The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower, 

Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn, 

Unfolds its bosom ; buds and leaves and sprigs 

And curling tendrils, gracefully disposed, 

Follow the nimble fingers of the fair ; 

A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow 

With most success when all besides decay." — The Task. 



COWPER 259 

" The verdure of the plain lies buried deep 
Beneath the dazzling deluge ; and the bents 
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest, 
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine 
Conspicuous and in bright apparel clad, 
And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. 
The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence 
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep 
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait 
Their wonted fodder ; not like hungering man 
Fretful if unsupplied ; but silent, meek, 
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. 
He from the stack carves out the accustom'd load, 
Deep plunging and again deep plunging oft 
His broad keen knife into the solid mass." — The Task. 

2. Shyness — Fondness for Seclusion. — Jeffrey 
speaks of "that extraordinary combination of shyness and 
ambition to which we are probably indebted for the very ex- 
istence of Cowper's poetry." " Poor wounded bird," ex- 
claims Sainte-Beuve, " he sought to crouch unseen in his 
corner, to recover his strength little by little, to cure him- 
self of his wound in secrecy and assuage his long and poig- 
nant terrors. ... In the ever-recurring motive and theme 
of the blessedness of home he is inexhaustible. Macaulay 
calls Cowper " the gentle, shy, melancholy Calvinist, whose 
spirit had been broken by fagging at school," and Dawson 
speaks of " the holy shades and quiet ways and pleasant places 
where Cowper, witty, wise, godly, and true, delighted to 
walk." 

" But little society disturbed that sequestered life; few were 
the men and fewer the women whom he met ; he companied 
with sheep and birds, with his hares and his spaniel, till he 
grew to know them as friends." — Stop ford Brooke. 

11 No stricken deer that ever left the herd of men required 
a solace more. . . . He speaks from the contemplative 
air of rural retirement. He went thither to muse on the per- 



260 COWPER 

ishing pleasures of life. His disposition was of that retiring 
kind that shrinks from the world, and is free and at ease only 
in seclusion. To exhibit himself, he tells us, was ' mortal 
poison.' . . . He desired no nearer view of the world 
than he could gain from the newspaper ; or through the loop- 
holes of retreat to see the stir of the great Babel and not feel 
the crowd. . . . Such beings find their chief happiness 
in the privacy of a home. . . . They turn aside from the 
idols of fashion to worship their household gods. The fire- 
side, the accustomed window, the familiar garden, bound their 
desires." — H. T. Tucker matt. 

" Cowper's work, in the main, has only the sluggish vital- 
ity of this life. ... A vision of quiet green fields, in- 
habited by respectable gentlefolk, who led an existence of 
humble routine, made up Cowper's world." — G. E. Wood- 
berry. 

" He seldom launches out into general descriptions of 
nature ; he looks at her over his clipped hedges and from his 
well-swept garden walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment 
now and then, it is with an air of precaution. . . . He 
is delicate to fastidiousness, and is glad to get back, after a 
romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies, or a 
little child on a common, to the drawing-room and the ladies 
again, to the sofa and the tea-kettle." — William Hazlitt. 

" Cowper said, substantially, ' Leave the world,' as Rous- 
seau said, ' Upset the world.' Limited within a narrow circle 
of ideas, and living in a society where the great issues of the 
times were not represented in so naked a form, Cowper's in- 
fluence ran in a more confined channel." — Leslie Stephen. 

" Although he was neither husband nor father, Cowper was 
the poet of the family ; he was the poet of the home, of a well- 
ordered, pure, gently animated interior, of the grove we see 
at the bottom of the garden, of the chimney corner." — Sainte- 
Beuve. 



COWPER 26l 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Oh blest seclusion from a jarring world 
Which he, thus occupied, enjoys ! Retreat 
Cannot indeed to guilty man restore 
Lost innocence, or cancel follies past ; 
But it has peace, and much secures the mind 
From all assaults of evil, proving still 
A faithful barrier, not o'erleaped with ease 
By vicious custom, raging uncontrolled 
Abroad and desolating public life. 
Had I the choice of sublunary good, 
What could I wish that I possess not here ? 
Health, leisure, means to improve it, friendship, peace." 

— The Task. 

" Thus Conscience pleads her cause within the breast, 
Though long rebell'd against, not yet suppress'd, 
And calls a creature form'd for God alone, 
For Heaven's high purposes and not his own, 
Calls him away from selfish ends and aims, 
From what debilitates and what inflames, 
From cities humming with a restless crowd, 
Sordid as active, ignorant as loud, 
Whose highest praise is that they live in vain, 
The dupes of pleasure or the slaves of gain ; 
Where works of man are clustered close around, 
And works of God are hardly to be found, 
To regions where, in spite of sin and woe, 
Traces of Eden are still seen below, 
Where mountain, river, forest, field, and grove, 
Remind him of his Maker's power and love." 

— Retirement, 

" Votaries of business and of pleasure prove 
Faithless alike in friendship and in love. 
Retired from all the circles of the gay 
And all the crowds that bustle life away, 
To scenes where competition, envy, strife, 
Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life — 



262 COWPER 

Let me, the charge of some good angel, find 
One who has known and has escaped mankind ; 
Polite yet virtuous, who has brought away 
The manners, not the morals, of the day : 
With him, perhaps with her (for men have known 
No firmer friendships than the fair have shown), 
Let me enjoy, in some unthought-of spot, 
All former friends forgiven and forgot, 
Down to the close of life's fast fading scene, 
Union of hearts without a flaw between." 

— Valediction. 

3. Gloominess. — "The only passion that ever moved him 
was the morbid passion of despair, when the cloud that ob- 
scured his brain pressed heavy upon him ; and it was only 
when he wrote under this influence that he produced master- 
pieces, such as that noble and terrible poem, ' The Castaway ' 
and the lines of self-description in ' The Task.' " — T. H. 
Ward. 

"Unfortunately, the only record of his boyhood is the 
sombre account of it given by himself in after years, when the 
disposition to increase all the darker shades in his unregener- 
ate days was strong upon him." — Mrs. Oliphant. 

"The impression always remained by him, or rather the 
belief, that he had forfeited God's mercy and shut himself out 
from hope and heaven by not executing the will of Jehovah 
when it was made known to him and the appointed opportunity 
had come. By letting that opportunity pass he thought he had 
brought upon himself perpetual exclusion from God's favor. 
For a long time he thought that even to implore mercy 
would be opposing the determinate counsel of God. 
He thought himself shut out, by a particular edict, from 
God's mercy, excluded from Heaven, and doomed to de- 
struction. He thought that for him there was no access to 
the mercy-seat, and that he had no right to pray." — G. B. 
Cheever. 



COWPER 26j 

" His whole life was a long sadness. . . . Despair 
grew upon him apace, and he came to the settled opinion, 
which never left him, that he was a doomed, damned man, 
one who had committed an irreparable sin, and for whom 
there was no redemption forevermore. . . . The last 
five years of his life were passed in perpetual gloom. During 
these five years he is said never to have smiled. 
His life was a perpetual want." — George Dawson. 

" Cowper was profoundly Christian; from the point of 
view of proportion and taste, he was too much governed by 
austerity. He had a side almost Hebraic in its severity and 
terror . . . and at the same time he sometimes had sud- 
denly a sight, a vision, of Sinai." — Sainte-Beuve. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Obscurest night involved the sky, 

The Atlantic billows roared, 
When such a destined wretch as I, 

Wash'd headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left. 

. . . • • • • a 

I therefore purpose not or dream, 

Descanting on his fate, 
To give the melancholy theme 

A more enduring date : 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance in another's case. 

No voice divine the storm allay'd, 

No light propitious shone ; 
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, 

We perish'd, each alone : 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he." 

— The Castaway. 



264 COWPER 

14 The Lord will happiness divine 
On contrite hearts bestow ; 
Then tell me, gracious God, is mine 
A contrite heart or no ? 

I sometimes think myself inclined 

To love thee, if I could ; 
But often feel another mind, 

Averse to all that's good. 

My best desires are faint and few — 

I fain would strive for more : 
But when I cry, ' My strength renew! ' 

Seem weaker than before. 

Thy saints are comforted, I know, 

And love thy house of prayer ; 
I therefore go where others go, 

But find no comfort there." 

— The Contrite Heart. 

" Oh, happy shades ! to me unblest, 
Friendly to peace but not to me ; 
How ill the scene that offers rest 
And heart that cannot rest, agree ! 

This glassy stream, that spreading pine, 
Those alders quivering to the breeze, 

Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine 
And please, if anything could please. 

But fix'd unalterable Care 

Forgoes not what she feels within, 
Shows the same sadness everywhere, 

And slights the season and the scene." 

— The Shrubbery. 

4. Love of Nature. — Cowper was the harbinger of new 
and better things in English poetry. It has been truly said 
that "he, first of English poets, brought men back from the 
town to the country." 



COWPER 265 

"We read Cowper, not for his passion or for his ideas, but 
for his love of nature and his faithful rendering of her beauty. 
. . . [Cowper teaches us that] God made the country and 
man made the town. True beauty is to be found only in un- 
adulterate nature ; true pleasure only in the fields and woods 
and in the simple offices of rural and domestic life. To watch 
nature at her work; to meditate; to cultivate sympathy with 
those creatures most fresh from nature's hand — with animals 
and the poor and friends of your home — this [in Cowper's 
judgment] is the only way to rational happiness." — T. H. 
Ward. 

'* God wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic 

senses 
As hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences. 
The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number ; 
And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a 

slumber. ' ' — Mrs. Browning. 

" Springtime almost intoxicates him. . . . There is 
something of the squirrel in the gaiety with which it inspires 
him. . . . Cowper loved the country dearly ; he loved 
it to live in, to dwell in, and did not grow weary of it at any 
age or at any season." — Sainte-Beuve. 

" His love of nature is at once of a narrower and sincerer 
kind than that which Rousseau made fashionable. He has no 
tendency to the misanthropic or cynical view which induces 
men of morbid or affected minds to profess a love of savage 
scenery simply because it is savage. Neither does he rise to 
the more philosophical view, which sees in the seas and the 
mountains the most striking symbols of the great forces of the 
universe. Nature is to him a collection of baubles soon to be 
taken away, and he seeks in its contemplation temporary relief 
from anguish." — Leslie Stephen. 

"It was with an eye and heart thus blissfully enlightened 
that Cowper had been taught to look upon nature ; and inas- 



266 COWPER 

much as he has told us that, both in his delineations of nature 
and of the human heart, he had drawn all from experience, 
. the poet that could write, out of his own experience, 
< The Winter Morning Walk ' and ' The Winter Walk at 
Noon,' must himself have been the happy man, appropriating 
nature as his Father's work — must himself have felt the dear 
filial relationship, the assurance of a Father's love and of a 
child's inheritance in heaven." — G. B. Checver. 

11 His sense of beauty was practically confined to landscape 
and small animals. . . . His poems on birds and flowers 
are pretty conceits, but at the present day remind us a little 
of the nursery." — G. E. Woodbury. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere, 
And that my raptures are not conjured up 
To serve occasions of poetic pomp, 
But genuine. ..." 

" The achievements of art may amuse, 
May even our wonder excite ; 
But groves, hills, and valleys diffuse 
A lasting, a sacred delight." 

" O Nature, whose Elysian scenes disclose 
His bright perfections at whose will they rose, 
Next to the power that formed thee and sustains 
Be thou the great inspirer of my strains." 

" Lovely, indeed, the mimic works of art, 
But nature's works far lovelier. I admire, 
None more admires, the painter's magic skill, 
Who shows me that which I shall never see : 

But imitative strokes can do no more 

Than please the eye — sweet Nature every sense ; 

The air salubrious of her lofty hills, 

The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales 



COWPER 267 

And music of her woods — no works of man 

May rival these ; these all bespeak a power 

Peculiar and exclusively her own. 

Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast ; 

'Tis free to all — 'tis every day renewed ; 

Who scorns it, starves deservedly at home." — The Task. 

u Oh Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, 
Thy breath congeaPd upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
Fringed with beard made white with other snows 
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds, 
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
A sliding car indebted to no wheels, 
But urged by storms along its slippery way; 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st 
And dreaded as thou art ! " — The Task. 

" The night was winter in its roughest mood ; 
The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon 
Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
And where the woods fence off the northern blasts, 
The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue 
Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
The dazzling splendor of the scene below. 
Again the harmony comes o'er the vale ; 
And through the trees I view the embattled tower 
Whence all the music. I again perceive 
The soothing influence of the wafted strains, 
And settle in soft musings as I tread 
The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, 
Whose outspread branches overarch the glade." 

— The Task. 

5. Theoretical Satire. — Critical opinion concerning 
Cowper's satire is as diverse as it is concerning Thackeray's. 
It is theoretical in that it is directed against sins real and 
imaginary, of which Cowper had no personal experience or 
observation, and because he was disposed to except from his 



268 COWPER 

broad censure almost every specific case that happened to 
come within his notice. 

" Society was to him an abstraction, on which he dis- 
coursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no 
lash, it is brandished in the air. No man was ever less quali- 
fied for the office of a censor ; his judgment is at once dis- 
armed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by the 
slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad : but the bishop 
whose brother Cowper knows is a blessing to the church. Bit- 
ter lines against Popery [the original lines 390 to 413 of 
the poem entitled ' Consolation '] were struck out because the 
writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throck- 
morton, who were Roman Catholics. In all his social judg- 
ments, Cowper is at a wrong point of view. He is always 
deluded by the idol of his care. He writes perpetually on 
the assumption that a life of retirement is more favorable to 
virtue than a life of action." — Goldwin Smith. 

" Cowper knew but little of the world, and he became its 
censor because he was so ignorant. He prided himself upon 
being of it but not in it and looking upon it through his re- 
treat. It is not strange, then, that much of his satire lacks 
point."— T. H. Ward. 

"Asa scold we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea 
of the use of railing, and there are many pages of laudable 
invective against various vices, which we feel no call whatever 
to defend. But a great vituperator had need to be a great 
hater ; and of any real rage, any such gall and bitterness as 
great and irritable satirists have in other ages let loose upon 
men, he was as incapable as a tame hare." — Walter Bagehot. 

" The most effective satirist is the man who has escaped 
with labor and pain, and not without some grievous stains, 
from the slough in which others are mired. . . . Sepa- 
rated by a retirement of twenty years from a world with 
which he had never been very familiar, and at which he only 
peeped through the loop-holes of retreat, his satire wanted 



COWPER 269 

the brilliancy, the quickness of illustration from actual life, 
which alone makes satire readable." — Leslie Stephen. 

So much for the opinions of three eminent critics ; that 
some commentators have seen Cowper's whip brandished else- 
where than "in air," is evident from the following esti- 
mates : 

"His satire is excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with 
the polished manners of the gentleman and the indignation of 
the virtuous man." — William Hazlitt. 

" Few writers are more unsparing of the lash than the 
shrinkingly sensitive Cowper. It may be that he does not 
lay it on with the sense of personal power and indignant pay- 
ing off of old scores which one finds in a Juvenal or a Pope ; 
but the conviction that he is the mouthpiece of Providence, 
and that, when William Cowper has pronounced a man rep- 
robate, the smoke of his burning is sure to ascend up forever 
and ever, stands instead of much, and lends unction to the 
hallowed strain. . . . His narrow, exclusive, severe, and 
arbitrary religious creed — a creed which made him as sure 
that other people were wicked and marked out for damnation 
as that himself was elected and saved— this creed speaks out 
in his poems in unmistakable tones of harsh judgment and 
unqualified denunciation." — W. M. Rossetti. 

"The recluse in an out-of-the-way village set himself the 
task of becoming a Christian Juvenal." — J. R. Greene. 

" In his satire Cowper touches, not with savage bitterness, 
but with a gentleness which healed while it lashed : He saw 
cities and their evils through the exaggeration of distance and 
in that glare of morality in which sin is so magnified that 
the good which balances it is lost. He saw the curse which 
rested on man and nothing else when he looked upon the 
city. Cowper had the penetrating irony belonging to timid 
and sorrowful natures, endowed with very delicate organs, 
which are doubtless shocked by the bluntness and coarseness 
around. ' ' — Stopford Brooke. 



270 COWPER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Would you your son should be a sot or dunce, 
Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once ; 
That in good time the stripling's finished taste 
For loose expense and fashionable waste 
Should prove your ruin and his own at last ; 
Train him in public with a mob of boys, 
Childish in mischief only and in noise, 
Else of a mannish growth, and, five in ten, 
In infidelity and lewdness, men. 
There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old, 
That authors are most useful pavvn'd or sold ; 
That pedantry is all that schools impart, 
But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart ; 
There waiter Dick, with bacchanalian lays, 
Shall win his heart, and have his drunken praise, 
His counsellor and bosom-friend shall prove, 
And some street-pacing harlot his first love." 

— Tirocinium. 

" But loose in morals and in manners vain, 
In conversation frivolous, in dress 
Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse ; 
Frequent in park, with lady at his side, 
Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes ; 
But rare at home, and never at his books 
Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card ; 
Constant at routs, familiar with a round 
Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor ; 
Ambitious of preferment for its gold, 
And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, 
By infidelity and love of the world, 
To make God's work a sinecure ; a slave 
To his own pleasures and his patron's pride — 
From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, 
Preserve the Church ! and lay not careless hands 
On skulls that cannot teach and will not learn." 

— The Task. 



COWPER 271 

" How shall I speak thee or thy power address, 
Thou god of our idolatry, the Press? 
By thee religion, liberty, and laws 
Exert their influence and advance their cause ; 
By thee worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befell, 
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell ; 
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise ; 
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies ; 
Like Eden's dead probationary tree, 
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee ! " 

— The Progress of Error. 

6. Patriotism. — " Cowper is a patriot and a true English- 
man, even inclusive of prejudice and bias. In order to read 
him as he ought to be read and to understand thoroughly all 
his chief points, . . . it is necessary to recollect the 
events of those years — the American War, the stormy debates 
in Parliament, etc., etc." — Sai?ite-Beuve. 

" He derived his patriotism, and drew the passion with 
which he informed it, from the connection of his country 
with God. It was God who was king of England and was 
educating the nation ; and this conception bound all citizens 
in the mutual love of one another and the whole. 
It is not a note of mere lyric interest in Britain's glory on 
the seas, like Thomson's ' Rule Britannia ; ' . . . it 
is a note that thrills with emotion for England as God's 
nation and having a work to do for man. We already 
breathe the air of the patriotic poetry of Wordsworth." 
— Stopford Brooke. 

" His love of country was absolute. He says : 
1 I never framed a wish or formed a plan 
That flattered me with hope of earthly bliss, 
But there I laid the scene.' " — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" Now and then, in reading ' The Task,' we come across a 
dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philan- 



272 COWPER 

thropy, surprises and offends the reader's palate like garlic in 
our butter." — Goldwin Smith. 

" Cowper, by virtue of his family traditions, was in theory 
a sound Whig. . . . He rises into a warmth on behalf 
of liberty for which he thinks it right to make a simple- 
minded apology in a note." — Leslie Stephen. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" England, with all thy faults, I love thee still — 
My country ! and while yet a nook is left 
Where English minds and manners may be found, 
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime 
Be fickle and thy year most part deform'd 
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost — 
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies 
And fields without a flower for warmer France 
With all her vines ; nor for Ausonia's groves 
Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers. 
To shake thy senate and from heights sublime 
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire 
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task : 
But I can feel thy fortunes and partake 
Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart." — The Task. 

" Peculiar is the grace by thee possess'd, 
Thy foes implacable, thy land at rest ; 
Thy thunders travel over earth and seas, 
And all at home is pleasure, wealth, and ease. 
'Tis thus, extending his tempestuous arm, 
Thy Maker fills the nations with alarm ; 
While his own heaven surveys the troubled scene, 
And feels no change, unshaken and serene. 
Freedom, in other lands scarce known to shine, 
Pours out a flood of splendor upon thine ; 
Thou hast as bright an interest in her rays 
As ever Roman had in Rome's best days." 

— Expostulation. 



COWPER 273 

" ' Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free ; 
They touch our country and their shackles fall.' 
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, 
And let it circulate through every vein 
Of all your empire ; that where Britain's power 
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too." — The Task. 

7. Sportiveness — Fantastic Humor. — Cowper's 
humor is sui generis, for the reason that, excepting perhaps 
the humor of Lamb, Cowper's is due to a different influence 
from that which generally gives rise to this element of style. 
As Woodberry truly says, "He played only to escape his 
terror, and at last failed even in that." 

" It has been objected to Hamlet that the sportiveness of 
the prince mars the effect of his thoughtfulness. But it is 
natural, when the mind is haunted and oppressed by any 
painful idea which it is necessary to conceal, to seek relief and 
at the same time increase the deception by a kind of play- 
fulness. This is exemplified in Cowper's letters. 
He reared his airy structures to keep his mind from being swept 
away by a gloomy current. To this end he surrendered himself 
to the most obvious pleasantry at hand. . . . Cowper 
speculates on balloons with the charming playfulness that 
marks the correspondence of a lively girl." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

11 His playful humor — call it rather wit — was at all times 
prepared to construct out of the slenderest materials an amus- 
ing incident. So ready and so graceful, in fact, was the poet's 
fancy that he knew how to make an amusing story out of 
nothing." — Higgins (an old Neighbor). 

Speaking of the well-known story of the suggestion of the 
theme of " John Gilpin," Cowper's humorous masterpiece, 
Southey says : " Lady Austen's conversation had as happy an 
effect on the melancholy spirit of Cowper as the harp of David 
had upon Saul." 
18 



274 COWPER 

''When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by 
insensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light 
over all the incidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass . 
a halibut served up for dinner, a cat shut up in a drawer, 
sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest 
and brightest jet of all being 'John Gilpin.'" — Goldwin 
Smith. 

"He trifles because he is driven to it by necessity. His 
most ludicrous verses have been written in his saddest moods." 
— Leslie Stephen. 

Cowper confirms Stephen's statement ; for he once de- 
clared, "The most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been 
written in the saddest mood." 

ILLUSTRATION. 
" Away went Gilpin, neck or nought ; 
Away went hat and wig ; 
He little dreamt, when he set out, 
Of running such a rig. 

The wind did blow, the cloak did fly, 
Like streamer long and gay, 
Till loop and button failing both, 
At last it flew away. 

Then might all people well discern 
The bottles he had slung ; 
A bottle swinging at each side, 
As hath been said or sung. 

The dogs did bark, the children scream'd, 
Up flew the windows all ; 
And every soul cried out, ' Well done ! ' 
As loud as he could bawl. 

Away went Gilpin — who but he? 

His fame soon spread around ; 

1 He carries weight ! ' * he rides a race ! ' 

* 'Tis for a thousand pounds ! ' 



COWPER 275 

And still as fast as he drew near, 

'Twas wonderful to view 

How in a trice the turnpike men, 

Their gates wide open threw. 

« 

And now, as he went bowing down 
His reeking head full low, 
The bottles twain behind his back 
Were shatter'd at a blow. 

Down ran the wine into the road, 
Most piteous to be seen, 
Which made his horse's flanks to smoke 
As they had basted been. 

But still he seem'd to carry weight, 

With leathern girdle braced ; 

For all might see the bottle-necks 

Still dangling at his waist."— John Gilpin s Ride, 



8. Sensitive Tenderness — Sympathy. — Woodberry 
calls Cowper " The companionable, soft-hearted, pathetic 
man, whose pastimes, whether in gardening or poetry or in 
caring for his pets, were a refuge from the most poignant 
anguish; " and Cowper wrote as a part of his own epitaph, 

" His highest powers to the heart belong, 
His virtue formed the magic of his song " 

" Apart from his religion, Cowper was eminently human 
and gentle-hearted ; the interest which he took in his tame 
hares will perhaps be remembered when much of his wielding 
of the divine thunderbolts against the profane shall have been 
forgotten." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" He had too delicate and too pure a heart. . . 
Poor charming soul, pinched like a frail flower transplanted 



276 COWPER 

from a warm land to the snow ; the world's temperature was 
too rough for it, and the moral law which should have sup- 
ported it tore it with its thorns." — Taine. 

" The feminine delicacy and purity of Cowper.'s manners 
and disposition, . . . the singular gentleness and mod- 
esty of his whole character, . . . make us indulgent to 
his weaknesses and more delighted with his excellencies than 
if he had been the centre of a circle of wits or the ornament 
of a literary confederacy." — Francis Jeffrey. 

" The sonnet to Mary is so perfect in its beauty that it 
could not but be universally admired ; but the lines to the 
memory of his mother go down as deep into other hearts as 
the love that inspired them in the depths of his own. . . . 
The unequalled tenderness and pathos of this poem, and the 
universal experience of the sweetness and preciousness of a 
mother's love by which all hearts answer to its exquisite 
touches, have rendered it the best appreciated and admired of 
all Cowper's productions." — G. B, Cheever. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 
Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss; 
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers — Yes. 
I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
And turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
But was it such? — It was. Where thou art gone 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more !" 

— On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. 



COWPER 277 

*' But ah! what wish can prosper, or what prayer, 
From merchants rich in cargoes of despair, 
Who drive a loathsome traffic, gauge and span 
And buy the muscles and the bones of man ? 
The tender ties of father, husband, friend, 
All bonds of nature in that moment end ; 
And each endures, while yet he draws his breath, 
A stroke as fatal as the scythe of Death. 
The sable warrior, frantic with regret 
Of her he loves, and never can forget, 
Loses in tears the far-receding shore, 
But not the thought that they must meet no more ; 
Deprived of her and freedom at a blow, 
What has he left that he can yet forego ? " — Charity. 

" Thy indistinct expressions seem 
Like language utter'd in a dream ; 
Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, 

My Mary! 

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
Are still more lovely in my sight 
Than golden beams of orient light, 

My Mary ! 

For, could I view nor them nor thee, 
What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
The sun would rise in vain for me, 

My Mary! 

Partakers of thy sad decline, 
Thy hands their little force resign ; 
Yet gently press'd, press gently mine. 

My Mary !" 
— To Mary {Mrs. Unwiri). 

9. Unconventional Morality — Didacticism. — 

" Verse was deliberately adopted by Cowper at a mature age 
as a means of usefulness. . . . He became a lay-preacher 



278 COWPER 

in numbers. His object was to improve men, not like the 
bard of Avon by powerfully unfolding their passions, nor 
like Pope by pure satire, but rather through the quiet teach- 
ings of the moralist." — H. T. Tuckermaii. 

"He says over and over again — and his entire sincerity 
lifts him above all suspicion of the affected self — that he 
looked upon his poetical works as at best innocent triflings 
except so far as his poems were versified sermons. His inten- 
tion was everywhere didactic, and his highest ambition was 
to be a useful auxiliary to the prosaic exhortations of Dodd- 
ridge, Watts, or his friend Newton." — Leslie Stephen. 

" A genuine desire to make society better is always present 
in his poems." — Goldwin Smith. 

"In the morality of his poems Cowper is honorably dis- 
tinguished from most of his brethren. Our poets have too 
often deviated into an incorrect system of morals, coldly de- 
livered ; a smothered, polished, filed down Christianity ; a 
medium system between the religion of the Gospel and the 
heathen philosophy, and intended, apparently, to accom- 
modate the two. In Cowper all is reality ; there is no doubt, 
no vagueness of opinion ; the only satisfactory object on 
which our affections can be fixed is distinctly and fully 
pointed out. A perfect line is drawn between truth and 
error. The heart is enlisted on the side of religion ; every 
precept is just, every motive efficacious. Sensible that every 
vice is connected with the rest — that the voluptuous will be- 
come hard-hearted, and the unthinking licentious — he aims 
his shafts at all ; and as Gospel truth is the base of morality, so 
is it the ground-work of his precepts." — Quarterly Review, 
Vol. 16. 

" He took his part in that great work which Samuel John- 
son helped to do, and that was to make morality fashionable. 
He had been in the world long enough to get polished ; he 
went out of it early enough to be pure and unsophisticated." 
— George Dawson. 



{{ 



COWPER 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Throughout mankind, the Christian kind at least, 

There dwells a consciousness in every breast 

That folly ends where genuine hope begins, 

And he that finds his heaven must lose his sins. 

Nature opposes, with her utmost force, 

This riving stroke, this ultimate divorce ; 

And while Religion seems to be her view, 

Hates with a deep sincerity the true : 

For this, of all that ever influenced man, 

Since Abel worshipp'd or the world began, 

This only spares no lust, admits no plea, 

But makes him, if at all, completely free ; 

Sounds forth the signal, as she mounts her car, 

Of an eternal, universal war ; 

Rejects all treaty, penetrates all wiles, 

Scorns with the same indifference frowns and smiles ; 

Drives through the realms of Sin where Riot reels, 

And grinds his crown beneath her burning wheels." 

— Hope. 

u Stand now and judge thyself — Hast thou incurr'd 
His anger who can waste thee with a word, 
Who poises and proportions sea and land, 
Weighing them in the hollow of his hand, 
And in whose awful sight all nations seem 
As grasshoppers, as dust, a drop, a dream ? 
Hast thou (a sacrilege his soul abhors) 
Claim'd all the glory of thy prosperous wars ? 
Proud of thy fleets and armies, stolen the gem 
Of his just praise to lavish it on them ? 
Hast thou not learn'd, what thou art often told, 
A truth still sacred and believed of old, 
That no success attends on spears and swords 
Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord's ? " 

— Expostulation . 



280 COWPER 

" Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm, 
And make mistakes for manhood to reform. 
Boys are, at best, but pretty buds unblown, 
Whose scent and hues are rather guess'd than known. 
Each dreams that each is just what he appears, 
But learns his error in maturer years, 
When disposition, like a sail unfurl'd, 
Shows all its rents and patches to the world. 
If, therefore, even when honest in design, 
A boyish friendship may so soon decline, 
'Twere wiser sure to inspire a little heart 
With just abhorrence for so mean a part 
Than set your son to work at a vile trade 
For wages so unlikely to be paid." — Tirocinium. 

io. Piety — Cheerful Submissiveness. — Macaulay 
says that religion was the muse of Cowper. Hayley, in his 
famous epitaph on Cowper, calls him " Devotion's bard, de- 
voutly just," and Tuckerman calls him, " A soul gratefully 
recognizing the benignity of God, in the fresh verdure of 
the myrtle and the mutual attachment of doves, and yet in- 
credulous of his care for his own eternal destiny." 

Cowper once wrote to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, " I know, 
and have experience of it every day, that the mercy of God, 
to him who believes himself the object of it, is more than 
sufficient to compensate for the loss of every other blessing." 

" ' Unassisted by the hope of divine favor ! ' This makes 
the continual development of Cowper's piety most wonderful. 
Here was the bush burning but not consumed. Here was the 
faith of submission, reverence, love, glorifying God in the fires 
as truly as was ever manifested in the fiery furnace." — G. B. 
Cheever. 

"His life was as blameless as the water lilies which he 
loved. . . . Whatever we may think of his religion or 
the manner of it, there is no doubt that it indefinitely ex- 
tended his poetic sympathy, and that in this extension of 
sympathy we find ourselves in another world altogether than 



COWPER 28l 

that of Dryden, Pope, or Gray. ... In Cowper the 
poetry of human wrong begins that long, long cry against 
oppression and evil done by man to man, , . . which 
rings louder and louder through Burns, Coleridge, Words- 
worth, Shelley, and Byron. . . . Cowper carried this 
poetry of human wrong into the prisons with Howard and 
into the cottages and lives of the poor. . . . But here 
Cowper could not stop. He saw a higher liberty than any 
on earth, a liberty without which political liberty was in vain, 
with which even the slave felt free ; the liberty of heart de- 
rived from heaven. Cowper struck the first note of revolu- 
tionary poetry. He struck it in connection with God. 

. . His tenderness for the weak and poor and wronged 
is as sweet as his hatred of oppression is strong. 
Cowper's poetry was drenched with theology. . . . His 
religion led him to trace all moral guilt and folly to the 
world's rejection of Christ. . . . He looked abroad and 
saw all men related to God, it mattered not of what nation, 
caste, or color. . . . The range of his interest was as 
wide as human life, and as he sketched he saw as the one 
ideal and the one remedy for all — the cross of Christ. ' ' — 
Stopford Brooke. 

" He has a moral and religious sentiment that never aban- 
dons him — a gleam of St. Paul and the apostles, with the 
appreciation of a comfort and well-being that the apostles 
never knew." — Sainte-Beuve. 

"One very great task which Cowper accomplished was to 
teach men of taste that men of piety are not necessarily dull- 
ards and fools, and to teach men of piety that they need not 
be coarse and vulgar. . . . He did this country an es- 
sential service, which almost all the poets have been better 
for. Since Cowper's days the greatest poets have been on 
the side of the angels — men as timorous about wrong-doing 
as they are glorious in the praise of right. Wordsworth, 
Coleridge, and Tennyson are in a direct line from Cowper. 



282 COWPER 

. . . It is a comfort to find a poet so pious as Cowper and 
not a ' muff.' " — George Dawsofi. 

"It is not for himself that he rejoices only, but he feels in 
his glowing heart the gladness and coming glory of the whole 
universe. . . . The writings of Cowper testify every- 
where to that grand sermon which is eternally preaching in 
the open air — that gospel of the field and forest, which, like 
the gospel of Christ, is the voice of that love that overflows the 
universe ; which puts down all sectarian bitterness in him 
who listens to it ; which, being perfect, ' casts out all fear ; ' 
against which the gloom of bigots and the terrors of fanatics 
cannot stand. . . . Despairing even of God's mercy 
and of salvation, his religious poetry is of the most cheerful 
and triumphantly glad kind. 

' His soul exults, hope animates his lays. 
The sense of mercy kindles into praise.' 

Filled with this joyful assurance, wherever he turns his eyes 
on the magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of 
noble gratulation." — William Howitt. 

" The career of Cowper was one to fill the pessimist with 
perennial gladness. ... It might seem that nothing 
short of malignity in the overruling powers could account 
for the fiat that gave up so pure, simple, and cordial a nature 
to be the prey of seven devils. . . . In 1766 every day 
the time from breakfast till 11 a.m. was spent [by Cowper] 
in reading the Bible or sermons or in religious conversation ; 
the hour from eleven to twelve was passed in church at ser- 
vice ; in the afternoon there was a second period of religious 
conversation or hymn singing ; at night there was commonly 
another sermon and more psalms, and after that family 
prayers. . . . This substitution of dogma for intuition 
made religion . . . not a life but a disease. . . . His 
letters are the effort of a creed-believing mind to get rid of 
itself."— £. E. Woodberry. 



COWPER 283 

" He belongs emphatically to Christianity. ... If 
the shield which, for eighteen centuries, Christ, by his 
teaching and his death, has spread over the weak things 
of this world should fail, and might should again become 
the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper 
will be cast aside as a specimen of despicable inferior- 
ity. ' ' — Goldwin Smith. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

"O Lord, my best desire fulfil, 
And help me to resign 
Life, health, and comfort to thy will 
And make thy pleasure mine. 

Why should I shrink at thy command, 
Whose love forbids my fears ? 

Or tremble at the gracious hand 
That wipes away my tears ? 

No, let me rather freely yield 

What most I prize to Thee ; 
Who never hast a good withheld, 

Or wilt withhold from me." — Submission. 



a 



Nor do we madly, like an impious world, 
Who deem religion frenzy, and the God 
That made them an intruder on their joys, 
Start atjiis awful name, or deem his praise 
A jarring note. Themes of a graver tone, 
Exciting oft our gratitude and love, 
While we retrace with Memory's pointing wand, 
That calls the past to our exact review, 
The dangers we have 'scaped, the broken snare, 
The disappointed foe, deliverance found 
Unlook'd for, life preserved and peace restored — 
Fruits of omnipotent eternal love." — The Task. 



284 COWPER 

Weak and irresolute is man ; 

The purpose of to-day, 
Woven with pains into his plan, 

To-morrow rends away. 



Bound on a voyage of awful length 

And dangers little known, 
A stranger to superior strength, 

Man vainly trusts his own. 

But oars alone can ne'er prevail 

To reach the distant coast ; 
The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, 

Or all the toil is lost." — Human Frailty. 

II. Scriptural Allusions. — As might be expected in a 
writer of Cowper's peculiar religious habits, he abounds in 
scriptural references and scriptural language. " Not only," 
says Leslie Stephen, " is the bulk of his poetry directly re- 
ligious or devotional, but on publishing ' The Task ' he as- 
sures Newton that he has admitted none but scriptural images, 
and has kept as closely as possible to scriptural language ; " 
Cowper thus gives evidence that this characteristic was con- 
scious and intentional. 

"His entire design was to communicate the religious 
views to which he was then a convert. He fancied that the 
vehicle of verse might bring many to listen to truths which 
they would he disinclined to have stated to them in simple 
prose. And however tedious the recurrence # of these theolog- 
ical tenets may be, to the common reader, it is certain that a 
portion of Cowper's peculiar popularity may be traced to their 
expression.' ' — Walter Bagehot. 



COWPER 285 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The change shall please, nor shall it matter aught 
Who works the wonder, if it be but wrought. 
'Tis time, however, if the case stands thus, 
For us plain folks and all who side with us 
To build our altar, confident and bold, 
And say, as stern Elijah said of old, 
' The strife now stands upon a fair award, 
If Israel's Lord be God, then serve the Lord ; 
If he be silent, faith is all a whim, 
Then Baal is the God, and worship him.'" 

— Conversa tio n . 

u Murmuring and ungrateful Discontent, 
That scorns afflictions mercifully meant ; 
Those humors, tart as wine upon the fret, 
Which idleness and weariness beget, 
These and a thousand plagues that haunt the breast, 
Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest, 
Divine communion chases, as the day 
Drives to their dens the obedient beasts of prey. 
See Judah's promised king, bereft of all, 
Driven out an exile from the face of Saul ; 
To distant caves the lonely wanderer flies, 
To seek that peace a tyrant's frown denies." — Retirement. 



11 



Have we not track'd the felon home, and found 
His birthplace and his dam ? The country mourns, 
Mourns because every plague that can infest 
Society, and that saps and worms the base 
Of the edifice that Policy has raised, 
Swarms in all quarters ; meets the eye and ear, 
And suffocates the breath at every turn. 
Profusion breeds them ; and the cause itself 
Of that calamitous mischief has been found — 
Found, too, where most offensive, in the skirts 
Of the robed pedagogue ! Else let the arraign'd 
Stand up unconscious and refute the charge. 
So, when the Jewish leader stretch'd his arm, 



286 COWPER 

And waved his rod divine, a race obscene, 
Spawn'd in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth, 
Polluting Egypt : gardens, fields, and plains 
Were covered with the pest ; the streets were fill'd ; 
The croaking nuisance lurk'd in every nook ; 
Nor palaces nor even chambers 'scaped ; 
And the land stank — so numerous was the fry." 

— The Task. 

12. Simplicity — Genuineness — Naturalness. — 
" His verses are full of personal emotions, genuinely felt, never 
altered or disguised." — Taine. 

'* He had preserved in no common measure the innocence 
of childhood." — Macau lay. 

" An earnest, tender writer and true poet enough to be 
true to himself." — Mrs. Browning. 

" Cowper's virtue was in his simplicity and his genuine- 
ness, rare qualities then. . . . His good fortune was in 
never belonging to the literary set or bowing to the town 
taste." — G. E. JVoodberry. 

" He delivered English verse from the graveclothes of 
French drapery, and bade it come forth and live in its own 
natural manly life. . . . There is the classic slang. I hate 
it. I heartily wish some one would put Pegasus out of the 
way. The muses are a set of old frumps, and I heartily 
wish some one would pension off the whole ' tuneful nine ' of 
them, so that I may never hear of them again. I am weary 
and sick of Mars and Jove and Helicon and Ilissus and the 
whole collection of stage properties. When I leave these for 
1 The Task ' it is like walking out of an evening party into the 
fresh moonlight, under the glorious stars, and talking about 
them, not finely, but simply, heartily, plainly, truly. I re- 
gard Latin verse, Greek verse, and piano-strumming as the 
three-headed Moloch to which England offers up brains and 
sense. . . . Cowper wrote English poetry into the Eng- 
lish language." — George Dawson. 



COWPER 287 

" No English poet has ever excelled Cowperwhen he writes 
of the daily human affections. In him, one might almost say, 
began in English poetry that direct, close, impassioned repre- 
sentation, in the least sensational manner, of such common re- 
lations as motherhood, filial piety, friendship, married love, 
the relation of man to animals — and in him they are made re- 
ligious. . . . Cowper's treatment of all moral subjects is 
distinguished from his treatment of his personal religion by an 
essential manliness of tone. Nowhere in our poetry is there 
heard a finer scorn of vanity, ambition, meanness ; nowhere is 
truth more nobly exalted or justice more sternly glori- 
fied. . . . Cowper talks as naturally of all men as Pope 
did of one or two classes of men." — Stopford Brooke. 

u There is something in the sweetness and facility of the 
diction that diffuses a charm over the whole collection [of 
Cowper's letters] and communicates an interest that is not 
often commanded by performances of greater dignity and pre- 
tension. ' ' — Francis Jeffrey. 

" His observation was remarkably nice and true in certain de- 
partments of life. . . . The most truly poetic phases of 
Cowper's verse are the portions devoted to rural and domestic 
subjects. Here he was at home and alive to every impression. ' ' 
— H. T Tucker man. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
The redbreast warbles still, but is content 
With slender notes and more than half suppress'd ; 
Pleased with his solitude and flitting light 
From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 
From many a twig the pendant drops of ice 
That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. 
Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 
Charms more than silence. Meditation here 
May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 
May give a useful lesson to the head, 
And Learning wiser grow without his books." — The 7 ask. 



288 COWPER 

" A poet's cat, sedate and grave 
As poet well could wish to have, 
Was much addicted to inquire 
For nooks to which she might retire, 
And where, secure as mouse in chink, 
She might repose, or sit and think. 
I know not where she caught the trick — 
Nature perhaps herself had cast her 
In such a mould philosophique, 
Or else she learn'd it of her master. 
Sometimes ascending, debonair, 
An apple-tree or lofty pear, 
Lodged with convenience in the fork, 
She watch'd the gardener at his work ; 
Sometimes her ease and solace sought 
In an old empty watering-pot : 
There, wanting nothing save a fan, 
To seem some nymph in her sedan 
Apparell'd in exactest sort, 
And ready to be borne to court." 

— The Retired Cat. 

€t Whence is it that, amazed, I hear 
From yonder wither'd spray, 
This foremost morn of all the year, 
The melody of May ? 

And why, since thousands would be proud 

Of such a favor shown, 
Am I selected from the crowd 

To witness it alone ? 

Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me 

For that I also long 
Have practised in the groves like thee, 

Though not like thee in song ? " 

— To the Nightingale. 



KEATS, 1795-1821 

Biographical Outline. — John Keats, born October 31, 
1795, at Moorfields, London ; father a livery-stable employe ; 
the childhood home of Keats is at the stable in Finsbury 
Circus ; the family remove in 1801 to Craven Street, City 
Road ; Keats is put into an excellent school in his eighth 
year; in April, 1804, his father is killed in an accident, and 
his mother marries one William Ravvlings, a stable-keeper, 
but is soon separated from him ; Keats' s mother then retires 
with her children to her father's home at Edmonton ; the 
maternal grandfather dies in March, 1805, and leaves a for- 
tune of ;£i 3,000, which places Keats in easy circumstances 
during his youth ; he attends school at Enfield, where he 
forms a friendship with Charles Cowden Clark, an usher and 
a son of the master; as a boy, Keats is " of extraordinary 
mettle, vivacity, and promise," courageous, high-minded, 
and generous ; after two school years of " fighting and 
frolic," he begins to study and read voraciously, devouring 
much literature, criticism, and classical mythology ; he leaves 
school with a fair knowledge of Latin and general history and 
some acquaintance with French ; although a " true Greek," 
he knew nothing of the language of Greece ; Keats's mother, 
to whom he was passionately devoted, died in February, 1810, 
and in the July following Keats's maternal grandmother places 
him, with his sister and brothers, in the care of two guardi- 
ans, and makes over about ^8,000 to be held in trust for 
their use ; at the direction of Mr. Abbey, one of the trustees, 
John is withdrawn from school in 18 10, at the close of his 
fifteenth year, and is apprenticed for five years to a surgeon 

2S9 



290 KEATS 

at Edmonton ; his duties here permit frequent visits to his 
old school at Enfield, where Cowden Clark encourages him to 
continue his literary studies, especially in the Elizabethan 
writers; Spenser's "Faery Queene " arouses his enthusiasm 
and fires his ambition to become a poet ; his lines " In Imi- 
tation of Spenser" are said to have been the first he wrote, 
and are ascribed to his sixteenth or eighteenth year ; a fellow 
surgeon's apprentice at the time describes Keats as "an idle, 
loafing fellow, always writing poetry." 

Late in the autumn of 18 14 he quarrels with his master, 
possibly because he had neglected medicine for poetry, and goes 
to live by himself in London ; the death of his grandfather 
and of his only other adult relative about this time throws 
Keats and his brother and sister upon the mercy of Abbey, 
their "meddling" guardian; on reaching London, Keats 
continues his medical studies at the hospital of Saint Thomas 
and Saint Guys ; at first, he lodges at 8 Dean Street, with two 
other students ; Keats is a capable student at the hospital, and 
does not shirk the routine work ; but his room-mate writes 
that " his absolute devotion to poetry prevented his having any 
other tastes or indulging in any vice;" in February, 1815, 
he writes the address " To Hope " and the " Sonnet to Leigh 
Hunt," to honor that writer's release from prison; during 
the same year, or earlier, he writes two posthumous sonnets to 
Byron and Chatterton, the series beginning " Woman When 
I Behold Thee, Flippant, Vain," and his famous sonnet " On 
First Looking into Chapman's Homer ; " the latter was com- 
posed during the summer, just after a night's reading with 
Cowden Clark, who had come to reside in Clerkenwell ; in 
November, 181 5, Keats writes his rhymed epistle to Felton 
Mathew, and in the following February his valentine, " Hadst 
Thou Lived in the Days of Old," addressed to the future wife 
of his brother George ; in the spring of 181 6, through Cowden 
Clark, Keats meets Leigh Hunt, who soon becomes his inti- 
mate friend and stimulates him along romantic lines, but un- 



KEATS 291 

fortunately also brings upon Keats the obloquy already mani- 
fested toward himself by the conservative critics. 

On March 3, 18 16, Keats is appointed dresser in Guy's 
Hospital, and on the 25th of the following July he passes 
creditably an examination as licentiate at Apothecaries' Hall; 
his first printed verse was the sonnet beginning " O Solitude, 
if I with Thee Might Dwell," which appeared in Leigh Hunt's 
Examiner, May 5,1816; at the home of Hunt Keats receives 
much literary inspiration, and meets there Shelley and J. H. 
Reynolds, with whom he forms a close and lasting friendship; 
he develops a brotherly intimacy, also, with Reynolds's sis- 
ters, one of whom afterward married Thomas Hood ; in the 
summer of 1816 Keats removes his lodgings to the Poultry, to 
be near his brothers, then employed in the counting-house of 
Mr. Abbey, but spends most of his time at the home of Hunt 
in the "Vale of Health" at Hampstead, " where a bed was 
always ready for him in the library ; " this is the house cel- 
ebrated in Keats's verses " Sleep and Poetry; " during the 
summer of 181 7 he also writes at Hunt's house the verses be- 
ginning " I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill," intended as part 
of a poem on the myth of Endymion, and the fragment called 
" Calidore ; " in the early autumn he is at Margate, where 
he writes the epistles to his brother George and Cowden Clark 
and the sonnet beginning " Many the Wonders I This Day 
Have Seen ; " on his return to London lodgings he writes the 
sonnets "To My Brother" and "Keen, Fitful Gusts Are 
Whispering;" his familiar letters to friends and relatives, 
which form such an attractive picture in his later years, be- 
gin in the autumn of 181 7. 

In November, 181 7, through Hunt, Keats meets the paint- 
er Haydon, to whom he addresses the sonnet " Great Spirits 
Now on Earth Sojourning ; " the result is a warm friendship 
between the two and a marked influence over Keats by Hay- 
don ; during the same month Hunt publishes in his Examiner 
Keats's sonnet " On Looking into Chapman's Homer," and 



292 KEATS 

calls attention to the author's poetic ability, coupling his 
name with Shelley's ; four others of Keats's sonnets appear in 
the Examiner during the following spring, and " his poetic 
vocation seems to have been sealed ; " although he has per- 
formed some successful operations as a surgeon, Keats deter- 
mines, against the remonstrance of his guardian, Mr. Abbey, 
to abandon the profession of surgery and to bring out a vol- 
ume of his verses ; Shelley at first advises Keats to withhold 
his verses, but afterward helps him to find a publisher ; the 
volume appears in March, 1817, with a dedication to Leigh 
Hunt ; the book has no sale, and Keats's brothers are dis- 
gusted ; in April, 1817, on the advice of Haydon, Keats 
goes alone to the Isle of Wight, that he may "be alone to 
improve himself," and takes lodgings at Shanklin, where he 
writes his " Ode on the Sea," published in the Champion for 
August, 1817, and continues his " Endymion," begun but 
abandoned long before ; he is aided financially by the pub- 
lishers of the London Magazine, who agree to publish 
" Endymion " when completed, and allow Keats to draw on 
them in advance ; in May he goes to Margate, where he is 
joined by his brother Tom ; they go thence to Canterbury for 
several weeks, and in the midsummer of 181 7 the three broth- 
ers are together at Hampstead in Wellwalk ; here Keats forms 
a fast friendship with C. W. Dilke and C. A. Brown, liter- 
ary men who live at Lawn Bank in John Street ; he declines 
to visit Shelley at Great Marlow, " in order that he might," 
as he said, " have his own unfettered scope ; " he spends the 
month of September, 181 7, at Oxford, at the home of a friend, 
and begins there his letters to his young sister Fannie ; while 
here, also, he first shows signs of poor health ; he had hereto- 
fore been robust, and, during 1817 or 1818, had thrashed a 
butcher at Hampstead ; he returns to London in October, and 
finds a quarrel on between Hunt and Haydon and some cool- 
ness in Hunt toward himself; Keats spends the last part of 
November at Burford Bridge, near Dorking, where he finishes 



KEATS 293 

" Endymion," completing the work exactly within the time 
he had allowed himself for it ; here he also studies Shake- 
speare's minor poems and sonnets ; he returns to Hampstead 
in December ; in the early winter he writes for the Champion 
three short pieces of dramatic criticism, including that on 
" Richard III. ; " during the winter he reads the proofs of 
" Endymion," enjoys himself socially, and, through Haydon, 
meets Wordsworth, who, when Keats recites his " Hymn to 
Pan" from " Endymion," by Wordsworth's request, calls it 
" a pretty piece of paganism ; " during the winter Keats also 
meets William Godwin, Charles Lamb, and Hazlitt, whose 
lectures he regularly attends ; during the winter he also writes 
several minor poems and sonnets, including those begin- 
ning "O Golden-tongued Romance with Serene Lute" and 
" Time's Sea Has Been Five Years at Its Slow Ebb " and those 
entitled "The Nile" (written February 4th, in competition 
with Hunt and Shelley), " To Apollo," " To Robin Hood, " 
and " On Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair." 

In March, 1818, Keats goes to Teignmouth to nurse his 
invalid brother Tom; he remains until about May 15th, 
and while at Teignmouth writes "Isabella" and the preface 
to "Endymion," and studies " Paradise Lost" with a view 
to writing his " Hyperion ; " he writes here, also, his metri- 
cal epistle to Reynolds ; returning with his brother to Hamp- 
stead, he remains five weeks; meantime "Endymion" ap- 
pears, but attracts little attention ; after the marriage and 
emigration of his brother George to America, in June, 1818, 
Keats starts on a walking tour with his friend Charles Armi- 
tage Brown through the Lake District and Scotland ; they 
visit Lancaster, Windermere, Ambleside, Derwent- water, 
Keswick, Carlisle, Dumfries, The Giant's Causeway, Glas- 
gow, the Trossachs, the Hebrides, and Inverness ; during the 
trip Keats writes many letters and verses, but only his " Meg 
Merrilies" and his " Fingal's Cave" are worth preservation ; 
the exposure in tramping in the Highlands brings on a throat 



294 KEATS 

trouble, from which Keats never recovered ; by the advice of 
a physician he sails at once from Cromarty for London, and 
reaches his Hampstead lodgings August 18th ; for the next 
three and a half months he nurses his dying brother Tom, 
while his loneliness and the insulting criticisms of his " En- 
dymion " in Blackwood's Magazine and the Quarterly Re- 
view discourage Keats and injure his health ; but he rallies, 
and declares, " I think I shall be among the English poets 
after my death ; " much sympathy for him is privately ex- 
pressed, and an anonymous adviser sends him ^25. 

In October, 18 18, he begins his series of long journal-let- 
ters addressed to his brother in America ; he had begun to 
write " Hyperion " in September ; soon afterward he writes 
" I never was in love, yet the voice and shape of a woman 
have haunted me these two days. . . . This morning 
poetry has conquered, I have relapsed into those abstractions 
which are my only life. . . . There is an awful warmth 
about my heart, like a load of immortality " ; this first at- 
traction appears transitory, but Keats soon finds " his real 
enslaver " in the person of Fanny Brawne, a girl of seventeen, 
daughter of a widow living in Downshire Street, near by ; 
Keats describes her to his brother as " beautiful and elegant, 
graceful, silly, fashionable, and strange; " although she seems 
to have had little appreciation of Keats's gifts and little consid- 
eration for his circumstances and temperament, Miss Brawne 
becomes engaged to him during the winter ; she seems to 
have been an accomplished flirt, and entered freely into social 
pleasures from which Keats's health and occupations debarred 
him ; his brother Tom dies December 1, 18 18, and Keats 
immediately complies with Brown's invitation to come and 
keep house with him at Wentworth Place ; he works, during 
the winter, on "Hyperion," and sends to his American 
friends his two lyrics, " Bards of Passion and of Mirth " and 
"Ever Let the Fancy Roam ; " late in January, 1819, he 
goes with Brown to Sussex, where they visit Dilke and other 



KEATS 295 

mutual friends ; while at Bedhampton, in the house of Mr. 
John Snook, Keats writes "The Eve of St. Agnes," ap- 
parently composed in part before, and begins his fragment, 
"The Eve of St. Mark ; " he returns to Wentworth Place 
in February, and, during the ensuing spring, with no sanguine 
belief in their success or care for their preservation, he com- 
poses there his finest meditative odes, including " On Indo- 
lence," "To Psyche," "To a Nightingale," and probably 
" To Melancholy ; " the ode " To a Nightingale " was first 
printed in July, 1819, in "The Annals of the Fine Arts ; " 
during the same spring he writes the ballad "La Belle Dame 
sans Merci" (which he copies for his brother "with laugh- 
ing comment, as if it were nothing at all "), his " Chorus of 
Fairies," written for a projected mask or opera, and his son- 
nets beginning " Why Did I Laugh To-night?" and "As 
Hermes Took to His Feathers Light," besides the two on 
"Fame" and that "To Sleep;" " La Belle Dame sans 
Merci" was printed by Hunt in the Indicator, May 20, 1820, 
with the signature " Canone; " meantime Keats is worried by 
failing health, unrequited love, the contempt of literary crit- 
ics, and financial troubles; during the summer of 181 9 his 
supplies from his guardian are entirely stopped for a time, 
while Haydon and other friends to whom Keats had loaned 
over ^200 are unable to pay him ; he had " no extravagancies 
of his own," and seems to have forgotten his share in the 
direct legacy under his grandfather's will ; he seriously con- 
templates abandoning literature and taking up journalism or 
surgery for a living ; he is dissuaded by Brown, who seems 
fully to have appreciated Keats, and who loans him money 
for his needs during the summer ; Keats and Brown then go 
to join their friend Rice at Shanklin, where the two begin to 
collaborate on a tragedy on Otho the Great, Brown making 
the plot and Keats writing the dialogue ; Keats also begins 
his " Lamia " at Shanklin ; on August 12th Keats and Brown 
remove to Winchester, hoping thus to improve Keats's health ; 



296 KEATS 

he is better at Winchester, where he remains two months, and 
where he and Brown finish " Otho the Great," while Keats 
begins a new tragedy, completes " Lamia," adds to the " The 
Eve of St. Mark," and writes his ode to "Autumn;" 
meantime he studies Italian zealously, and writes long letters 
to America, in which he determines " to cease fretting and 
face life bravely; " he takes a lodging at 25 College Street, 
London, settles there October 10, 18 19, and tries to get em- 
ployment as dramatic critic on London journals ; he also pro- 
poses " to write on the liberal side of the question for whoever 
will pay me; " but consumption and hypochondria soon take 
possession of him ; on October 16th he settles with Brown 
at Westminster, so as to be next door to his fiancee, and " from 
this time forth he knew neither peace of mind nor health of 
body again;" about this time "Otho the Great" is re- 
jected, without examination, by the management of the Covent 
Garden Theatre, and is provisionally accepted by the manage- 
ment of Drury Lane; November 17, 1819, Keats writes to 
his publishers: " The writing of a few fine plays is still my 
greatest ambition, when I do feel ambitious, which is very sel- 
dom ; " inspired with Byron's success with " Beppo " and 
" Don Juan," Keats plans a fairy poem, which he begins un- 
der the title " Cap and Bells ; " about this time he writes to 
Fanny Brawne in "piteous love-plaints," published posthu- 
mously, poems which he would doubtless never have vol- 
untarily published ; he completes eighty-eight Spenserian 
stanzas, which are signed with the nom de plume " Lucy- 
Vaughn Lloyd;" at the same time he takes up "Hyper- 
ion," which had been thrown aside for six months, amplifies 
and recasts it, and prepares the allegorical preamble ; this 
recast has often wrongly been taken for a first revision, as 
it is greatly inferior to the original poem ; it reflects Keats's 
bitterness and despondency at the time; he seems at this 
time to have sought relief from his "rooted misery" in 
some dissipation, which only aggravated his maladies ; he 



KEATS 297 

begins taking laudanum, but abandons it on Brown's remon- 
strance. 

From Christmas, 18 19, he gives up writing on " Cap and 
Bells " and " The Vision,"- and is confined to his home most 
of the time by ill-health ; he receives a flying visit in January, 
1820, from his brother George, who finds Keats "not a sane 
being;" on February 3, 1820, after a night-ride outside a 
coach from London to Hampstead, he is seized with a hem- 
orrhage ; nervous prostration follows, and Keats is confined 
to his bed for six weeks, meantime tenderly nursed by Brown 
and exchanging daily notes with Fanny Brawne ; partially re- 
gaining his strength in March, he goes with Brown to Graves- 
end, and returns to a lodging in Wesleyan Place, Kentish 
Farm, so as to be near Leigh Hunt, while Brown makes 
another tour in Scotland ; here Keats reads the proof of a vol- 
ume of poems written after " Endymion " and published in 
July, 1820, under the title of " Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of 
St. Agnes, and Other Poems ; " all the poems of this volume, 
which made Keats immortal, were written between March, 
1818, and October, 1819; he says, "I feel sure I should 
write, from the mere yearning and tenderness I have for the 
beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morn- 
ing and no eye ever rest upon them ; " this volume opens the 
eyes of critics like Lamb and Shelley to Keats's true genius, 
while even Jeffrey at once writes a laudatory critique in the 
Edinburgh Review ; but fresh hemorrhages, followed by in- 
creased despondency and weakness, come to Keats in June ; 
the Hunts take him into their home and nurse him tenderly, 
but his jealous misery causes him to distrust his best friends ; 
on August 1 2th he leaves Hunt's house, charging him with 
opening a letter from Fanny Brawne, and is taken in by the 
latter's mother in Wentworth Place. 

On partially regaining strength, he determines to go to 
Italy for his health ; he declines Shelley's cordial invitation 
to visit him in Pisa, and sails from London, September 18, 



298 KEATS 

1820, with his more intimate friend, the painter Severn ; on 
the voyage toward Rome he lands for a day on the Dorset 
coast, where he composes his last poem, the sonnet beginning 
" Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art ; " he pro- 
jects, also, but does not write a poem on " Sabrina ; " after 
a month's voyage he and Severn reach Naples ; he declines a 
second invitation to visit Shelley, and starts with Severn for 
Rome about November 12th ; at Rome they take lodgings in 
the Piazza di Spagna, where Keats spends the last three 
months of his life ; after a violent relapse in December, he 
begs Severn to let him end his life with laudanum ; Severn 
nurses him assiduously ; during the last days Keats reads much 
in Jeremy Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying," and is con- 
soled by Severn's playing of Haydn's sonatas; he daily asks 
his physician, " When will this posthumous life of mine come 
to an end?" and asks that his epitaph be, " Here lies one 
whose name was writ in water ; " he dies at Rome, in Severn's 
arms, February 23, 182 1, and is buried there in the old Prot- 
estant cemetery ; Severn was buried by his side in 1881. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON KEATS. 

Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

1 : 218-247 an( l 2 : 3°3 _ 3 2 7- 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Arnold). New York, 1881, Mac- 

millan, 4: 427-463. 
Jeffrey, F., "Modern British Essayists." Boston, 1856, Sampson, 

6:413-419. 
Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 

2 : 100-122. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 

1 : 350-354. 

Morley, J., "English Men of Letters" (Colvin). New York, 1887, 
Harper, v. index. 

Milnes, B. M. (Lord Houghton), " Life and Letters of Keats." Lon- 
don, 1867, Moxon, 1-334. 

Rossetti, W. M., "Life of Keats." London, 1887, Walter Scott, v. 
index. 



KEATS 299 

Clarke, C. and M. C, "Recollections of Writers." New York, 1879, 

Scribner, 120-158. 
De Quincey, T., " Works." Edinburgh, 1890, A. & C. Black, 1 : 377- 

394- 
Shelley, P. B., "Adonais." New York, 1870, J. Miller (Works), 

3: 154-169. 
Hunt, L. , " Selections from English Poets," Philadelphia, 1854, W. P. 

Hazard, 230-255. 
Mitford, M. R , " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1852, 

Harper, 921. 
Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 

Macmillan, 3 : v. index. 
Mabie, H. W., "Essays in Literary Interpretation." New York, 1892, 

Dodd, Mead & Co., 138-175. 
Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 

London, 1885, Murray, 159-194. 
Devey, J., "A Comparative Estimate." London, 1873, Moxon, 

263-274. 
Swinburne, "Encyclopaedia Britannica." New York, 1882, Scribner, 

14 : 22-24. 
Haydon, B. F., "Correspondence and Table Talk." London, 1876, 

2 : 1-17. 
Howitt, W., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge, 292-300. 
Hunt, L., "Lord Byron and Some Contemporaries." London, 1828, 

246-268. 
Masson, D., " Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats." London, 1874, Mac- 
millan, 143-191. 
Tuckerman, H. T., " Characteristics of Literature." Philadelphia, 

1849, 256-269. 
Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature and Life." Boston, 1890, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 47-66. 
Caine, H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Stock, 158-190. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 

Francis, 238-250. 
Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 

349-362. 
Morley, J., "English Men of Letters " (Colvin). New York, 1887, 

Harper, 50-66 and 207-218. 
Keats, J., " Letters to Fanny Brawne." London, n. d., Reeves & 

Turner, v. index. 
Keats, J., " Letters to his Family." London, 1891, Macmillan, n-19. 



300 KEATS 

Houghton, Lord, " Life and Letters of John Keats." London, 1867, 

Moxon, v. index. 
Dawson, W. J., " Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 

Whittaker, 48-60. 
Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." London, 1845, Tait, I : 372-385. 
Dennis, J., " Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, J. B. Young, 

365-373. 

Owen, F. M., "John Keats, a Study." London, 1880, Kegan Paul & 
Co., v. index. 

Holmes, O. W., " After a Lecture on Keats." Boston, 1891, Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. (Works), I : 226-227. 

Lang, A., " Letters on Literature." London, 1889, Longmans, Green 
& Co., 55-67. 

Lester, J. W., "Criticisms." London, 1853, Longmans, 343-349. 

Dilke, C. \V., " Papers of a Critic." London, 1875, Murray, I : 2-14. 

Century, 5:599-610 (E. C. Stedman) ; Century, 28 (50) : 910-914 
(H. Van Dyke). 

Manhattan Review, 3 : 489-498 (J. Benton). 

Critic, 5 : 181-182 (J. Benton). 

Academy, 24 : 407-408 (E. Gosse). 

Forum, 21 : 420-424 (T. W. Higginson). 

Canadian Monthly, 15 : 449-454 (E. Fawcett). 

Scribner's Monthly, 15 : 203-213 and 402-417 (R. H. Stoddard). 

Tail's Magazine, 13 : 249-254 (De Quincey). 

Appleton's Magazine, 19: 379-382 (R. H. Stoddard). 

Southern Lkerary Messenger, 8: 37-41 (H. T. Tuckerman). 

Macmillan's Magazine, 3 : 1-16 (D. Masson); 58: 311-320 (S. Colvin). 

Edinburgh Review, 34: 203-213 (F. Jeffrey). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Love of Beauty. — In his last days Keats wrote : 
(l If I should die, I have left no immortal works behind me; 
but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things." 

" He had an unerring instinct for the poetic use of things, 
and for him they had no other use. We are apt to talk of 
the classic renaissance as of a phenomenon long past, nor 
ever to be returned, and to think the Greeks and Romans 
alone had the mighty magic to work such a miracle. To me, 
one of the most interesting aspects of Keats is that in him we 



KEATS 30I 

have an example of the renaissance going on almost under 
our own eyes, and that the intellectual ferment was in him 
kindled by a purely English leaven." — Lowell. 

"The truth is that the yearning passion for the Beautiful 
which was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the master- 
passion, is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental man, 
is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental poet. It is an 
intellectual and spiritual passion. It is, as he again says, 
1 the mighty abstract idea of Beauty in all things.' 
He has made himself remembered and remembered as no 
merely sensuous poet could be ; and he has done it by having 
' loved the principle of beauty in all things.' ... By 
virtue of his feeling for beauty and of his perception of the 
vital connexion of beauty with truth, Keats accomplished so 
much in poetry, that in one of the two great modes by which 
poetry interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, 
in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare. 
— Matthew Arnold. 

" Keats, youthful and prodigal, the magician of unnum- 
bered beauties, which neither author nor reader can think of 
counting or assessing, is the Keats of our affection. Mature 
him, and he would be a more perfect planner and executant, 
and promoted to yet loftier office among the immortals ; but 
he could not win upon us more, could not leave us a more 
lovely memory nor so priceless a treasure of regret. 
The susceptibility which is visible in his poems to all forms 
of beauty and delight, and the unexhausted inspiration and 
spontaneous flow which they exhibit, needed nothing but one 
small impulsion to rouse him and start him on his course." 
— W. M. Rossetti. 

" There is no descent into his soul of that spirit of beauty, 
that 'awful loveliness,' before whose presence the poet's 
sensations are stilled, and in whose celebration his language 
is adoration. In the place of this, there is an all-absorbing 
relish and delicate perception of beauty — a kind of feeding 



302 KEATS 

on ' nectared sweets ' — a glow of delight in the abandonment 
of the soul to soft and delicious images, framed by fancy out 
of rich sensations. ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' is del- 

icately beautiful, and perfect of its kind. . . . The sense 
of luxury is its predominant characteristic, and though full of 
exquisite fancies, it has no grand imaginations. 
That the poetry of Keats is full of beauties, that it evinces a 
most remarkable richness and sensitiveness of imagination, 

is cheerfully acknowledged by everyone who reads 
poetry without having his fancy and imagination shut in by 
prejudice." — E. P. Whipple. 

" In what other English poet are you SO certain of never 
opening a page without lighting upon the loveliest imagery 
and the most eloquent expressions ? Name one. Com- 
pare any succession of their pages at random, and see if the 
young poet is not sure to present his stock of beauty ; crude, 
it may be, in many instances ; too indiscriminate in general ; 
never, perhaps, thoroughly perfect in cultivation ; but there 
it is, exquisite of its kind and filling envy with despair." 
-—Leigh Hunt. 

" Meek child of earth ! thou wilt not shame 

The sweet dead poet's holy name ; 

The god of music gave thee birth, 

Called from the crimson-spotted earth, 

Where, sobbing his young life away, 

His own fair Hyacinthus lay. 

The hyacinth my garden gave 

Shall lie upon that Roman grave ! " 

— O. W. Holmes. 
" Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen, lovelier 
it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see. . . . 
The faultless force and the profound subtlety of this deep and 
cunning instinct for the absolute expression of absolute nat- 
ural beauty can hardly be questioned or overlooked ; and 
this is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or power which 



KEATS 303 

denotes him as a poet among all his equals, and gives him 
right to a rank forever beside Coleridge and Shelley. . . . 
Of these [Odes] perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfec- 
tion, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of 
the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that 
to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" He lived in a sort of ecstasy during no small portion of 
these solitary hours, when he would call the wind his wife, 
the stars through the window-panes his children, and rest 
contented in the abstract idea of beauty in all things. . . . 
Although to Keats the worship of beauty in all things was 
the essence of his life, and the delight that sprang from it the 
essence of his joy, he did not find in these the whole of life." 
— G. E. Woodberry. 

" When the ' Endymion ' comes to be critically considered, 
it will be found that its excellence consists in its clear com- 
prehension of that ancient spirit of beauty, to which Keats's 
outward perceptions so excellently ministered, and which un- 
dertook to ennoble and purify, as far as was consistent with 
their physical existence, the instinctive desires of mankind." 
— Mary Russell Mitford. 

" Keats wrote the famous sonnet [on Chapman's Homer] 
and struck for the first time that rich and mellow note, res- 
onant of a beauty deeper even than its own magical cad-ence, 
heard for the first time in English poetry. The sonnet has 
an amplitude of serene beauty which makes it the fitting pre- 
lude of Keats's later works. ... It was no obvious and 
superficial beauty which mirrored itself in his soul and which 
he was to give back line for line. His springs were in the 
secret places, fed by the spirit of God and discovered alone 
by those who hold the divining-rod of genius. 
1 The Eve of St. Agnes ' — a vision of beauty, deep, rich, and 
glowing as one of those dyed windows in which the heart of 
the Middle Ages still burns. The beauty of his work has by 
strange lack of insight been taken as evidence of its defect in 



304 KEATS 

range and depth. It is not beauty of form and color alone 
which gives the ' Ode on a Grecian Urn ' and the ode ' To 
Autumn ' their changeless spell ; it is that interior beauty of 
which Keats was thinking when he wrote those profound 
lines, the very essence of his creed : ' Beauty is truth, truth 
beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to 
know.' . . . The ode ' To Autumn ' and ' The Eve of 
St. Agnes ' are beautiful to the very heart ; they are not 
clothed with beauty ; they are beauty itself. . . . His 
soul was in contact with the soul of things, not with their 
surface beauty." — H. W. Mabie. 

" What shall I say of < The Eve of St. Agnes? ' What, 
indeed, can I say but that it is the most exquisite, the most 
perfect poem in the world. It is all innocence, all purity, 
all music, all picture, all delight, and all beauty." — R. H. 
Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 

Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 

And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 

She seemed a splendid angel, newly-drest, 
Save wings, for Heaven." — The Eve of St. Agnes. 

" When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
1 Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

— Ode to a Grecian Urn. 

'* A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 
Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 



KEATS 3°S 

Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing. 

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 

A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 

Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways 

Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, 

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 

For simple sheep; and such are daffodils 

With the green world they live in." — Endymion. 



2. Delicate Fancy— Sympathetic Imagination. — 

" Keats certainly had more of the penetrative and sympa- 
thetic imagination which belongs to the poet, of that imagina- 
tion which identifies itself with the momentary object of its 
contemplation, than any man of these later days. It is not 
merely that he has studied the Elizabethans and caught their 
turn of thought, but that he really sees things with their sov- 
ereign eye and feels them with their electrified senses. His 
imagination was his bliss and bane." — Lowell. 

"Keats was born a poet of the most poetical kind. All 
his feelings came to him through a poetical medium or were 
speedily colored by it. He enjoyed a jest as heartily as any 
one, and sympathized with the lowliest commonplace ; but 
the next minute his thoughts were in a garden of enchant- 
ment, with nymphs and fauns and shapes of exalted humanity. 
It might be said of him that he never beheld an oak-tree 
without seeing the Dryad." — Leigh Hunt. 

" They [his poems] are flushed all over with the rich lights 
of fancy and so colored and bestrewn with the flowers of 
poetry that even while perplexed and bewildered in their 
labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their 
sweetness or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they 
so lavishly present. . . . Without much incident or 



306 KEATS 

many characters, and with little wit, wisdom, or arrange- 
ment, a number of bright pictures are presented to the 
imagination and a fine feeling expressed of those mysterious 
relations by which visible external things are assimilated with 
inward thoughts and emotions and become the images and 
exponents of all passions and affections." — Francis Jeffrey. 

" Keats has come to his own, and it was not the surgeon's 
shop ; it was the great world of the imagination, in the power 
of realizing which to eyes less penetrating and to minds less 
sensitive he was to be without a master so far as time and 
growth were given him. . . . How deep was the loveli- 
ness of that early putting forth of the young imagination ! It 
was no delicate fancy, no light touch of skill, no precocious 
brightness of spirit, which Keats gave the world : it was pure 
imagination, that rarest and most precious because most cre- 
ative of gifts. — H. W. Mabie. 

" Here we come to one of the most intrinsic properties 
of Keats's poetry. He is a master of imagination in 
verbal form : he gifts us with things so finely and magic- 
ally said as to convey an imaginative impression." — W. M. 
Rossetti. 

" With what skill he had learned to call up a picture in all 
its distinctness of form and color imagination, is best seen in 
the opening stanzas of 'St. Agnes' Eve,' and in the unri- 
valled description of the painted window in the same poem." 
— W. J. Courthope. 

" In him an imagination and fancy of much natural capac- 
ity were lodged in a frame too weak to sustain the shocks of 
life. ... In his later works the imagination of Keats 
was somewhat released from the thraldom of sensation, and 
evinced more independent power. The ' Eve of St. Agnes ' 
is delicately beautiful and perfect of its kind ; but it is not 
poetry of the highest order. The sense of luxury is its pre- 
dominant characteristic, and though full of exquisite fancies, 
it has no grand imaginations." — E. P. Whipple. 



KEATS 307 

" What we independently know enables us to say that it 
was pre-eminently as a poet that he was fitted to be dis- 
tinguished. He was constitutionally a poet, one of those 
minds in whom, to speak generally, imagination or ideality 
is the sovereign faculty." — David Masson. 

" Fancy rather than form, sentiment rather than art, pre- 
dominate."— ^H. T. Tuckerman. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The doors all looked as if they oped themselves, 
The windows as if latched by fays and elves, 
And from them comes a silver flash of light, 
As from the westward of a summer's night ; 
Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes 
Gone mad through olden songs and poesies." 

— Rem in iscences. 



11 



Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane, 

In some untrodden region of my mind, 
Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, 

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind : 
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees 

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; 

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees, 
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep." 

— Ode to Psyche. 

11 Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight, 
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
And taper fingers catching at all things, 
To bind them all about with tiny rings." 

— /Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill. 



3. Exuberant Imagery. — " Keats's early poetry, in- 
deed, partook plentifully of the exuberance of youth. . . . 



308 KEATS 

His region is a wilderness of sweets — flowers of all hue and 
weeds of glorious feature." — Leigh Hunt. 

" The great distinction between him and these divine au- 
thors [Jonson and Milton] is, that imagination in them is sub- 
ordinate to reason and judgment, while, with him, it is para- 
mount and supreme. . . . His ornaments are poured out 
without measure or restraint and with no apparent design but 
to unburden the breast of the author, and give vent to the 
overflowing vein of his fancy. . . . The thin and scanty 
tissue of his story is merely the light frame- work on which his 
wreaths are suspended ; and while his imaginations go ram- 
bling and entangling themselves everywhere, like wild honey- 
suckles, all idea of sober reason and plan and consistency is ut- 
terly forgotten, and we are strangled in their waste of fertility. 
A great part of the work is written in the strongest and most 
fantastical manner that can be imagined. It seems as if the 
author had ventured everything that occurred to him in the 
shape of a glittering image or striking expression — taken the 
first word that presented itself to make up a rhyme and then 
made that word the germ of a new cluster of images — a hint 
for a new excursion of fancy — and so wandered on, equally 
forgetful whence he came and heedless whither he was going, 
till he had covered his pages with an interminable arabesque 
of connected and incongruous figures, that multiplied as 
they extended, and were only harmonized by the brightness 
of their tints and the graces of their forms." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

" Happy the young poet who has the saving fault of exuber- 
ance, if he have also the shaping faculty that sooner or later 
will amend it." — Lowell. 

" The spirit of art was always vividly near and precious to 
Keats. He fashioned it exuberantly into a thousand shapes, 
now of gem-like exquisiteness, now mere slight or showy trin- 
kets ; and of these the scrupulous taste will even pronounce the 
cheapest, and rightly pronounce them, to be trumpery. Still 



KEATS 309 

there is the feeling of art, however provoking its masquerade." 
— W. M. Rossetti. 

" Since Spenser, Keats is the most poetical of poets, be- 
cause he saw with the imagination ; and what he saw flashed 
into images, figures, metaphors — the fresh and glowing speech 
of poetry. [' Endymion '] has the freshness of feel- 

ing and perception, the glow of imagination, the profusion 
and riot of imagery . . . which one would expect 
from so immature a mind. ... Its profusion of imagery 
. is the fault of excessive romanticism." — H. IV. 
Mabie. 

" He kept aloof from opinion, doctrine, controversy, as 
by a natural instinct; he was most at home in the world 
of sense and imagery, where it was his pleasure to weave 
forth phantasies ; and if his intelligence did now and then 
indulge in a discursive flight, it was by way of exercise, 
or because opinions, doctrines, and controversies may be 
considered as facts and therefore as materials to be worked 
into poetic language . . . He manifests a bewildering 
plentitude of luxuriant invention [in ' Endymion ']." — David 
Mas son. 

" The ' Ode to Psyche ' is a beautifully wrought specimen 
of Keats's jeweler's workmanship, of his power of seizing on 
an abstract thought and chasing it with fanciful imagery." — 
W. J. Courihope. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thou still unravished bride of quietness ! 

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 
Sylvian historian, who canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 
Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? " 

— Ode to a Grecian Urn. 



3IO KEATS 

" She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die ; 

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu ; and aching Pleasure nigh, 

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips : 
Ay, in the very temple of Delight 

Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue 

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
And be among her cloudy trophies hung." 

— Ode 011 Melancholy. 

u O magic sleep ! O comfortable bird, 

That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind 

Till it is hushed and smooth ! O unconfined 

Restraint ! imprisoned liberty ! great key 

To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, 

Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, 

Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves 

And moonlight ; ay, to all the mazy world 

Of silvery enchantment! — who, upfurled 

Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, 

But renovates and lives ? " — Endymion. 

4. Splendor — Magnificence. — " His fragment of 
* Hyperion ' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as 
sublime as ^Eschylus." — Lord Byron. 

" [' Hyperion '] presents the majesty, the austere beauty, 
and the simplicity of Grecian temples enriched with Grecian 
sculpture." — De Quincey. 

" ' Hyperion,' with its Titanic opening and Doric grandeur 
of tone, inviolate from first to last." — E. C. Stedman. 

" We see also incontestable proof of the greatness and purity 
of his poetic gift in the constant return towards equilibrium 
and repose in his later poems, and it is a repose always lofty 
and clear-aired, like that of the eagle balanced in incommuni- 
cable sunshine." — Lowell. 



KEATS 311 

" Witness the ' Sonnet on Looking into Chapman's Homer ' 
— epical in the splendor and dignity of its images, and ter- 
minating in the noblest Greek simplicity." — Leigh Hu?it. 
"Another splendor on his mouth alit, 

That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit 

And pass into the panting heart beneath 
With lightning and with music." — Shelley. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



<< 



a 



His palace bright, 

Bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold, 

And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks 

Glared a blood-red through all its thousand courts, 

Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries ; 

And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 

Flush'd angrily, while sometimes eagles' wings, 

Unseen before by gods or wondering men, 

Darken'd the place." — Hyperion. 

O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 

From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 

Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death 

Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; 

Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress 

Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken, 

And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and harken." 

— Endymion. 

11 It keeps eternal whisperings around 

Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 

Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 

Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 

Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, 

That scarcely will the very smallest shell 

Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, 

When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 



312 KEATS 

O ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, 

Feast them upon the wideness of the sea ; 

O ye whose ears are dimmed with uproar rude, 

Or fed too much with cloying melody, — 

Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth and brood, 

Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired ! " 

— On the Sea. 

5. Deep Pathos. — Near the close of his short, sad life 
Keats exclaims, " Oh, that something fortunate had ever hap- 
pened to me or my brothers — then might I hope — but despair 
is forced upon me as a habit." Not infrequently in his poems 
we find traces of the dark cloud that overhung all his days. 

" The very sadness of his lovely odes, ' To a Nightingale,' 
'On a Grecian Urn,' 'To Autumn,' 'To Psyche,' is the 
pleasant melancholy of the springtime of the heart." — Henry 
Van Dyke. 

" I will only say of ' Isabella ' that no English poet of the 
period of whom I have any knowledge, could have infused 
into it such tenderness and pathos as Keats has. 
There is an indescribable melancholy about this poem [' There 
is a charm in footing slow '], which is one of the best he ever 
wrote." — R. H. Stoddard. 

"O Pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips 
And heart-strung lyre awoke the moon's eclipse." 

— D. G. Rossetti. 

" 'Isabella,' feeble and awkward in narrative to a degree 
almost incredible in a student of Dryden and a pupil of Leigh 
Hunt, is overcharged with episodical effects of splendid and 
pathetic expression beyond the reach of either." — A. C. 
Swinburne. 

" Melancholy is most of all the mark he set upon his poetry 
— a mark which has been copied by so many later versifiers 
that it has seemed as if [it were] grief and pining." — C. F. 
Richardson. 

" The last words of his ' lost wanderer from Arden ' are 



KEATS 3 I 3 

terrible in their burden of agony ; they are as the wail of one 
who calls across a waste of dead water, and hears only his own 
cry return to him." — Hall Caine. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim ; 
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs, 
Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, 
And leaden-eyed despairs ; 
W T here beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow." 

— Ode to a Nightingale. 

" When by my solitary hearth I sit, 

And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom ; 
When no fair dreams before my ' mind's eye ' flit, 

And the bare heath of life presents no bloom ; 
Sweet Hope ! ethereal balm, upon me shed, 
And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. 

When e'er the fate of those I hold most dear 
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, 

O bright-eyed Hope my morbid fancy cheer ; 
Let me awhile thy brightest comforts borrow : 

Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed, 

And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! " 

— To Hope. 



a 



Why did I laugh to-night ? No voice will tell ; 

No God, no Demon of severe response, 
Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell. 

Then to my human heart I turn at once. 



314 KEATS 

Heart ! Thou and I are here sad and alone ; 

1 say, why did I laugh ? O mortal pain ! 
O Darkness ! Darkness ! ever must I moan, 

To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. 
Why did I laugh ? I know this Being's lease, 

My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads ; 
Yet would I on this very midnight cease, 

And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds ; 
Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, 
But Death intenser — Death is Life's high meed." 

— Sonnet. 



6. Mythological Invention. — "There is something 
very curious, too, we think, in the way in which he has dealt 
with the Pagan mythology, of which he has made so much 
use in his poetry. Instead of presenting its imaginary persons 
under the trite and vulgar traits that belong to them in the 
ordinary systems, little more is borrowed from these than the 
general conception of their condition and relations ; and an 
original character and distinct individuality is then bestowed 
upon them, which has all the merit of invention and all the 
grace and attraction of the fictions on which it is engrafted. 
The ancients, though they probably did not stand in any 
great awe of their deities, have yet abstained very much from 
any minute or dramatic representation of their feelings and 
affections. . . . The author before us, however, and 
some of his contemporaries, have dealt differently with the 
subject ; and, sheltering the violence of the fiction under the 
ancient traditionary fable, have in reality created and imagined 
an entire new set of characters, and have brought closely and 
minutely before us the loves and sorrows and perplexities of 
beings with whose names and supernatural attributes we had 
long been familiar, without any sense or feeling of their per- 
sonal character. ' ' — Francis Jeffrey. 

"Selecting, as in ' Endymion,' a legend of the Grecian 
mythology, or, as in 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,' a story 



KEATS 315 

of Boccaccio, or, as in ' The Eve of St. Agnes,' the hint of a 
Middle Age superstition, or, as in < Lamia,' a story of Greek 
witchcraft, he sets himself to weave out the little text of sub- 
stance so given into a linked succession of imaginary move- 
ments and incidents taking place in the dim lights of ideal 
scenery." — David Masson. 

" No English poet since Shakespeare was ever so possessed 
by the lovely mythology of Greece, which here discloses 
itself in the freshness and fulness of forest life and feeling." 
— R. If. Stoddard. 

"The manner in which Keats set about relating the Greek 
story [' Endymion '], as he had thus conceived it, was as far 
from being a Greek or ' classical ' manner as possible. 
But though Keats sees the Greek world from afar, he sees it 
truly. The Greek touch is not his, but in his own rich and 
decorated English way he writes with a sure insight into the 
vital meaning of Greek ideas. For the story of the war of 
the Titans and Olympians [in ' Hyperion '] he had nothing 
to guide him except scraps from the ancient writers, princi- 
pally Hesiod, as retailed by the compilers of classical diction- 
aries ; and from the scholar's point of view his version, we 
can see, would at many points have been arbitrary, mixing 
up Latin conceptions and nomenclature with Greek, and in- 
troducing much new matter of his own invention. But as to 
the essential meaning of that warfare and its results 
it could not possibly be divined more truly, or illustrated with 
more beauty and force, than by Keats in the speech of 
Oceanus in the Second Book." — Sidney Colvin. 

"In ' Endymion ' the lines of the old Greek story are com- 
pletely lost, and the subject becomes merely a vehicle for the 
expression of the poet's own individual moods and caprices 
of fancy." — W. J. Courthope. 



3 16 KEATS 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Until at length old Saturn lifted up 

His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone, 

And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, 

And that fair kneeling goddess ; and then spake 

As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard 

Shook horrid with such aspen malady : 

1 O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, 

Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face ; 

Look up, and let me see our doom in it ; 

Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape 

Is Saturn's ; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice 

Of Saturn ; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, 

Naked and bare of its great diadem, 

Peers like the front of Saturn.' " — Hyperion. 



a 



Upon a time before the faery broods 

Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, 

Before King Oberon's bright diadem, 

Sceptre, and mantle, clasped with dewy gem, 

Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns 

From rushes green, and brakes, and cow-slip'd lawns, 

The ever-smitten Hermes empty left 

His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft : 

From high Olympus had he stolen light, 

On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight 

Of his great summoner, and made retreat 

Into a forest on the shores of Crete. 

For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt 

A nymph, to whom all hoofed satyrs knelt ; 

At whose white feet the languid Titans poured 

Pearls, while on land they withered and adored." 

— Lamia. 

" What first inspired a bard of old to sing 
Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring ? 
In some delicious ramble, he had found 
A little space with boughs all woven round ; 



KEATS 317 

And in the midst of all a clearer pool 

Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool 

The blue sky ; here and there serenely peeping 

Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping ; 

And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, 

A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride, 

Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, 

To woo its own sad image into nearness : 

Deaf to light Zephyrus, it would not move ; 

But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. 

So while the poet stood in this sweet spot, 

Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot ; 

Nor was it long ere he had told the tale 

Of young Narcissus and sad Echo's Vale." 

/ Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill. 

7. Vagueness — Mysticism. — [In the < < Ode to a Night- 
ingale "] " You do not know what the house is, or where, nor 
who the bird. Perhaps a king himself. But you see the 
window open on the perilous sea, and hear the voice from out 
the tree in which it is nested, sending its warble over the 
foam. The whole is at once vague and particular, full of 
mysterious life. You see nobody, though something is heard ; 
and you know not what of beauty or wickedness is to come 
over that sea." — Leigh Hunt. 

"The modes of existence in the two parties to the love- 
fable of ' Endymion,' their relation to each other and to us, 
their prospects finally, and the obstacles to the instant realiza- 
tion of these prospects — all these things are more vague and 
incomprehensible than the reveries of an oyster. 
The very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapory 
sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy, seemed to me com- 
bined in Keats's 'Endymion' when I first saw it." — De 
Quincey. 

" Besides the riot and extravagance of his fancy, the scope 
and substance of Mr. Keats's poetry is rather too dreamy and 
abstracted to excite the strongest interest or to sustain the at- 



3 1 8 KEATS 

tention through a work of any great compass or extent. He 
deals too much with shadowy and incomprehensible beings, 
and is too constantly rapt into an extra-mundane Elysium, to 
command a lasting interest with ordinary mortals." — Francis 
Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" As Hermes once took to his feathers light, 

When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept, 
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright, 

So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft 
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes, 

And seeing it asleep, so fled away, 
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, 

Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, 
But to that second circle of sad Hell, 

Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 
Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell 

Their sorrows — pale were the sweet lips I saw, 
Pale were the lips I kissed, the fair form 

I floated with about that melancholy storm." 

— On a Dream. 

u I met a lady in the meads, 
Full beautiful — a faery's child ; 
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
And her eyes were wild. 
• • •••••• 

I set her on my pacing steed, 
And nothing else saw all day long, 
For side-long would she bend, and sing 
A faery song. 

She took me to her elfin grot, 
And there she wept, and sighed full sore, 
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes 
With kisses four, 



KEATS 319 

And there she lulled me asleep 

And there I dream'd — Ah ! woe betide ! 

The latest dream I ever dream'd 

On the cold hill's side. 

They cried — ' La Belle Dame sans Merci 

Hath thee in thrall ! ' 

I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 

With horrid warning gaped wide, 

And I awoke and found me here, 

On the cold hill's side." 

— La Belle Dame sans Merci. 

'* Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, 
That come a-swooning over hollow grounds, 
And wither drearily on barren moors : 
Dread opener of mysterious doors 
Leading to universal knowledge — see, 
Great son of Dryope 

The many that are come to pay their vows 
With leaves about their brows ! " — Endymion. 

8. Sensitiveness— Sensuousness. — Of all our great 
writers, Keats is the most sensitive. While this characteristic, 
when carried to an extreme, has subjected him to much severe 
criticism, it is also the secret of his rare power ; for, as Lowell 
justly says, "A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be 
pachydermatous at the same time ; and if he be imaginative 
as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount 
of his imagination." This quality of Keats's style appears 
especially in his letters and other writings composed shortly 
before his untimely death. Speaking of the lady to whom he 
was so passionately attached, he says, " Oh that I could be 
buried near where she lives ! I am afraid to write to her, 
to receive a letter from her — to see her hand-writing would 
break my heart." And a little later, after lying peacefully 
awhile, he said to a friend, "I can feel the flowers growing 
over me." 



320 KEATS 

"Every one of Keats's poems was a sacrifice of vitality; 
. • . even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm 
and thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses and the 
flutter of his electrical nerves. . . . Three men, almost 
contemporaneous with each other, Wordsworth, Keats, and 
Byron, were the great means of bringing back English poetry 
from the sandy deserts of rhetoric and recovering for her 
her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuousness, and passion. 
Without losing its sensuousness, his poetry refined 
itself and grew more inward, and the sensational was elevated 
into the typical by the control of that fine sense which under- 
lies the senses and is the spirit of them." — Lowell. 

11 Keats has, above all, a sense of what is pleasurable and 
open in the life of nature : for him she is the Alma Parens : 
his expression is, therefore, more than Guerin's, something 
genial, outward, and sensuous. No one can question the 
eminency,'in Keats's poetry, of the quality of sensuousness. 
Keats as a poet is abundantly and enchantingly sensuous; 
the question with some people will be whether he is anything 
else. Many things may be brought forward to show him as 
under the fascination and sole dominion of sense and desir- 
ing nothing better. There is the exclamation in one of 
his letters : ' Oh for a life of sensations rather than of 
thoughts ! ' . . . [In his love letters] we have the tone, 
or rather the entire want of tone, the abandonment of all 
reticence and all dignity, of the mere sensuous man, of the 
man who is passion's slave. . . . This sensuous strain 
Keats had, and a man of his poetic power could not, what- 
ever his strain, but show his talent in it. But he has some- 
thing more and something better. We who believe Keats to 
have been, by his promise, at any rate, if not fully by his 
performance, one of the very greatest of English poets, and 
who believe also that a merely sensuous man cannot either by 
promise or performance be a very great poet, because poetry 
interprets life, and so large and noble a part of life is outside 



KEATS 321 

such a man's ken — we cannot but look for signs in him of 
something more than sensuousness, for signs of character and 
virtue. There is Haydon's story of him, how he once 
covered his tongue and throat as far as he could reach with 
Cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the delicious coldness 
of claret in all its glory — his own expression." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

" In him an imagination and fancy of much natural capac- 
ity were lodged in a frame too weak to sustain the shocks of 
life and too sensitive for the development of high and sturdy 
thought. . . . His nature was essentially sensitive. Far 
from being independent of others, he held his life at the 
mercy of others. 

" In his early poems Keats appears as a kind of youthful 
Spenser, without Spenser's moral sense or judgment. His 
soul floats in a ' sea of rich and ripe sensations.' The odors, 
forms, sounds, and colors of nature take him captive. There 
is little reaction of his mind on his sensations. He grows 
faint and languid with the excess of light and loveliness which 
stream into his soul. . . . All that is mighty in nature 
and man is too apt to be sicklied o'er with fanciful sentimen- 
talities. The gods are transformed into green girls, and the 
sublime and beautiful turned to favor and prettiness. Every- 
thing is luscious, sweet, dainty, and debilitating, in his sense 
of love and beauty. There is no descent into his soul of that 
spirit of Beauty, that ' awful loveliness,' before whose presence 
the poet's sensations are stilled, and in whose celebration his 
language is adoration. In the place of this there is an all- 
absorbing relish and delicate perception of beauties — a kind 
of feeding on ' nectared sweets' — a glow of delight in the 
abandonment of the soul to soft and delicious images, framed 
by fancy out of rich sensations. It is rather reverie than 
inspiration. . . . This bewildering sense of physical 
pleasure was generally predominant in Keats. ... A 
keen sensitiveness of perception doubtless characterizes all 
21 



322 KEATS 

great poets. Keats is supposed to have had more of this 
power, because he lacked other and equally important powers 
or because it obtained over them such a mastery. 
The confounding of fine sensations with moral sense, the 
pleasurable with the right, is a great defect of Keats's poetry. 

"The most obvious characteristic of Keats's poetry is 
certainly its abundant sensuousness. Some of his finest little 
poems are all but literally lyrics of the sensuous, embodi- 
ments of the feelings of ennui, fatigue, physical languor, and 
the like, in tissues of fancied circumstances and sensation. 
In following him in these luxurious excursions into a 
world of ideal nature and life, we see his imagination wing- 
ing about, as if it were his disembodied senses hovering insect- 
like in one humming group, all keeping together in harmony 
at the bidding of a higher intellectual power and yet each cater- 
ing for itself in that species of circumstance which is its 
peculiar food. ... I believe that one of the most re- 
markable characteristics of Keats is the universality of his 
sensuousness." — E. P. Whipple. 

" At the foundation of the character of Keats lay an extra- 
ordinary keenness of all the bodily sensibilities and the mental 
sensibilities which depend upon them. He led, in great 
part, a life of passive sensation, of pleasure and pain through 
the senses. . . . He possessed, in short, simply in virtue 
of his organization, a rich intellectual foundation of that kind 
which consists of notions furnished directly by sensations and 
of a corresponding stock of names and terms. Even had he 
remained without education, his natural vocabulary of words 
for all the varieties of thrills, tastes, odors, sounds, colors, 
and tactual perceptions, would have been unusually precise 
and extensive. As it was, this native capacity for keen and 
abundant sensation was developed, educated, and har- 
monized by the influences of reading, intellectual conversa- 
tion, and more or less laborious thought, into that richer and 
more cultivated sensuousness, which, under the name of sensi- 



KEATS 323 

bility to natural beauty, is an accepted requisite in the con- 
stitution of painters and poets." — David Masson. 

" Sensuous Keats was, as every poet whose inspiration is 
direct from heaven should be. . . . Quick susceptibility 
to sensuous impressions of every kind may be plentifully 
illustrated by opening almost at random in his works. 
The extraordinary beauty and facility of his descriptions of 
sensation and his addiction to climax and point in his prose 
have made it easy to quote phrases which seem to show that 
he was unduly attached to delights of mere sense." — G. E. 
Woodberry. 

" Somewhat too sensually sensitive he may have been, but 
the nature of the man was, as far as was the quality of the poet, 
above the pitiful level of a creature whose soul could let itself 
be snuffed out by an article." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' pure and passionate, surprising 
by its fine excess of color and melody, sensuous in every line, 
yet free from the slightest taint of sensuality, is unforgettable 
and unsurpassable as the dream of first love." — Henry Van 
Dyke. 

"Viewing all these, . . . the predominant quality 
which we trace in them [his poems] is an extreme suscepti- 
bility to delight. . . . The emotion throughout is the 
emotion of beauty : beauty intensely perceived, intensely 
loved. . . . He was a man of perception rather than of 
contemplation or speculation. . . . He saw so far and 
so keenly into the sensuous as to be penetrated with the 
sentiment which, to a healthy and large nature, is its insepa- 
rable outcome. ... If the sensuous was his atmosphere, 
the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was senti- 
ment. The susceptibility is visible in his poems to all forms 
of beauty and delight." — W. M. Rossetti. 

"Keats was sensuous, . . . but the richness of his 
diction carries with it the impression of immense intellect- 
ual resource. . . . He was no idle singer of sensuous 



324 KEATS 

moods, he was a resolute and clear-sighted pursuer of the 
Ideal. ... In that sensuousness lay the promise of a 
prime which, had it come, might have recalled the noontide 
of Spenser and Shakespeare." — H. W. Mabie. 

"His sensibility, sharpened by mortal illness, tended to 
a morbid excess. . . . Extreme sensibility struggled in 
him with a great understanding." — Leigh Hunt. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" O known Unknown, from whom my being sips 
Such darling essence, wherefore may I not 
Be ever in these arms ? in this sweet spot 
Pillow my chin forever ? ever press 
These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess? 
Why not forever and forever feel 
That breath about my eyes ? " — Endymion. 

" Give me a golden pen, and let me lean 

On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear and far j 
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, 
Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen 
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween : 
And let there glide, By many a pearly car, 
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar, 
And half-discovered wings, and glances keen. 
The while let music wander round my ears ; 
And as it reaches each delicious ending, 
Let me write down a line of glorious tone, 
And full of many wonders of the spheres : 
For what a height my spirit is contending ! 
'Tis not content so soon to be alone." — Sonnet. 



a 



Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue ; 
Let the rose grow intense and warm the air, 
And let the clouds of even and of morn 
Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills ; 



KEATS 325 

Let the red wine within the goblet boil, 
Cold as a bubbling well ; let faint-lipped shells, 
On sands or in great deeps, vermillion turn 
Through all the labyrinths." — Endymion. 

9. Melody — Felicity of Expression. — ''Keats had 
an instinct for fine words, which are in themselves pictures 
and ideas, and had more of the power of poetic expression 
than any [other] modern English poet. . . . Thought 
emancipated itself from expression without becoming its ty- 
rant ; and music and meaning floated together, accordant as 
swan and shadow, on the smooth element of his verse." 
— Lowell. 

" No one else in poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression- 
quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveli- 
ness . " — Matthew A mold. 

" His work [' Endymion '] lives not by reason of its per- 
fect structure, but by reason of its overflowing beauty of po- 
etic thought and diction. . . . It is enough that, except 
Shakespeare, no English poet has found such color in our 
speech, has made it linger in the ear in phrase so rich and 
full."— H. W. Mabie. 

" The faultless force and the profound subtlety of his deep 
and cunning instinct for absolute natural beauty can hardly 
be questioned or overlooked ; and this is doubtless the one 
main distinctive gift or power which denotes him as a poet 
among all his equals, and gives right to rank forever beside 
Coleridge and Shelley." — A. C. Swinburne. 

"A casual survey will discover felicitous touches of de- 
scription, enough to indicate to any candid mind how full 
of poetry was the soul of Keats. He speaks of the ' patient 
brilliance of the moon ' and ' the quaint mossiness of aged 
roots.' Whoso feels not the force of such words will look in 
vain for the poetic either in life or literature." — H. T. Tuck- 
erman. 



326 KEATS 

" He brooded over fine phrases like a lover, and often 
when he met a quaint or delicious word he would take pains 
to make it his own by using it as speedily as possible in 
some poem he was writing." — David Masson. 

" Perhaps there is no poet, living or dead, except Shake- 
speare, who can pretend to anything like the felicity of epithet 
which characterizes Keats. One word or phrase is the es- 
sence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull 
substance of the earth struck through by electric fires and 
converted into veins of gold and diamonds." — William How- 
itt. 

" Keats came gradually to perceive the analogy between 
painting and poetry latent in the picturesque associations of 
individual words.' ' — W. J. Courthope. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Shed no tears ! Oh shed no tears ! 
The flower will bloom another year. 
Weep no more ! Oh weep no more ! 
Young buds sleep in the root's white core. 
Dry your eyes ! Oh dry your eyes ! 
For I was taught in Paradise 
To ease my breast of melodies. 

Shed no tears ! " — Faery Song. 

" To Sorrow 

I bade good morrow, 
And thought to leave her far away behind ; 

But cheerly, cheerly, 

She loves me dearly ; 
She is so constant to me, and so kind : 

I would deceive her, 

And so leave her, 
But ah ! she is so constant and so kind." 

— Endymion. 



KEATS 327 

" 'Tis the witching hour of night, 
Orbed is the moon and bright, 
And the stars they glisten, glisten, 
Seeming with bright eyes to listen — 

For what listen they ? 
For a song and for a charm, 
See they glisten in alarm, 
And the moon is waxing warm 

To hear what I shall say. 
Moon ! keep wide thy golden ears — 
Hearken stars ! and hearken, spheres ! 
Hearken, thou eternal sky ! 
I sing an infant's lullaby, 

A pretty lullaby. 
Listen, listen, listen, listen, 
Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, 

And hear my lullaby ! " — A Prophecy. 



SHELLEY, 1792-1822 

Biographical Outline.— Percy Bysshe Shelley, born at 
Field Place, Warnham, near Horsham, August 4, 1792 ; father 
a man of means and gentle birth, afterward a baronet ; Shel- 
ley is first instructed by a clergyman tutor, and at the age of 
ten is placed in Sion House Academy, near Brentford ; being 
a sensitive child, the persecutions endured from his school- 
fellows inspire him with that hatred of oppression and that 
spirit of resistance which marked all his after-life, while the 
smattering of scientific knowledge that he obtains at Brent- 
ford awakens in him a passionate thirst to know the secrets of 
nature ; at twelve he enters Eton, where he repeats the ex- 
periences of persecution at Brentford, only in an aggravated 
form, and where he again seeks relief from the torture of his 
fellows in scientific research; he is known at Eton as " Shel- 
ley, the Atheist," and is accused of " cursing his father and 
the King ; " while at Eton he makes good progress in the 
classics, and imbibes from a reading of the first two books of 
Pliny's " Natural History " that pantheism which marked his 
religious theories ever afterward ; in his sixteenth year he 
writes and publishes his romance " Zastrozzi," being an imi- 
tation of the style of Mrs. Radcliffe ; in 1810 he publishes 
another romance, entitled " St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," 
and soon afterward collaborates with his cousin, Thomas 
Med win, in writing a poem, which they call " The Wan- 
dering Jew ; " this poem was eventually published in Eraser's 
Magazine; in 1810 Shelley publishes also a volume entitled 
" Poems by Victor and Cazire," a part of which was written 
either by his sister Elizabeth or by his cousin, Harriet 
Grove, to whom he thought himself attached ; Shelley soon 

328 



SHELLEY 329 

withdrew this volume, on learning that his coadjutor had 
cribbed wholesale from Matthew Gregory Lewis. 

He enters University College, Oxford, April 10th, and soon 
afterward forms a friendship with Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a 
youth of sarcastic humor, who had great influence over 
Shelley all the rest of his life, and who encouraged him in his 
natural aggressiveness against established authority ; in 18 10 
Shelley and Hogg circulate a pamphlet of burlesque verses, 
purporting to have been written by Margaret Nicholson, an 
insane woman who had tried to kill the King ; soon afterward 
Shelley submits to the bishops and heads of colleges a syllabus 
of the arguments supposed to demonstrate "the necessity of 
atheism;" on March 25, 181 1, he is summoned before the 
college authorities, and, on his refusal to answer their ques- 
tions, is handed a sentence of expulsion, which had been pre- 
viously signed and sealed ; Hogg protests against the injustice 
to his friend, and is himself expelled in consequence. 

Being excluded, also, from his own home, Shelley takes 
lodgings in London at 15 Poland Street, and frequents the 
hospitals with the idea of eventually becoming a physician ; 
while in London he renews a slight acquaintance already 
formed with Harriet Westbrook, the fifteen-year-old daughter 
of a retired hotel-keeper, and also a school-friend of Shelley's 
sister ; Miss Westbrook fancies herself persecuted at home, and 
Shelley sympathizes and tries to interfere in her behalf; before 
his expulsion from Oxford he had been refused by his cousin, 
Harriet Grove, and when he is recalled to London from his 
summer vacation of 181 1 by letters from Harriet Westbrook, 
imploring his assistance, influenced by compassion and pique, 
he elopes with her to Edinburgh, where they are married 
August 28, 181 1 ; during the winter of 1811-12 Shelley 
resides at Keswick, where Southey receives him kindly, and 
here he opens his correspondence with Godwin, whose work 
on "Political Justice" had influenced the poet profoundly; 
inspired by Godwin's principles, Shelley leaves Keswick in 



330 SHELLEY 

February, 1812, on a quixotic expedition to redress the 
wrongs of Ireland ; he makes several public addresses in Ire- 
land, publishes "An Address to the Irish People," and in 
April departs for Wales, leaving Irish matters much as he 
found them ; about this time he becomes a vegetarian, and 
he generally follows this kind of diet so long as he is in Eng- 
land ; he spends the early summer of 181 2 at Cwm Elan, and 
later settles at Lynmouth in North Devon, where he publishes 
a powerful remonstrance against the condemnation of one 
Eaton for publishing the third part of Thomas Paine's " Age 
of Reason." 

During 181 2 Shelley excites the attention of the Govern- 
ment by sending to sea in boxes and bottles a " Declaration 
of Rights " and a poem entitled " The Devil's Walk ; " until 
after the excitement thus caused had passed, he secludes him- 
self at Tanyrallt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales ; while 
there he becomes so interested in an important public engi- 
neering work (a sea-wall) that he goes to London to raise 
money for the prosecution of the work ; while in London he 
meets Godwin ; he leaves Tanyrallt in February, 18 13, and 
settles in Ireland, near Killarney, till the following June, 
when he goes with his wife to London, where their first child, 
Ianthe, is born June 28, 18 13 ; in July Shelley takes a house 
in Bracknell, in Berkshire, near Windsor Forest ; about this 
time his " Queen Mab," apparently written in 181 2, is pub- 
lished with an appendix of irrelevant matter consisting of 
notes on " natural diet ; " the poem remained unknown till 
1 82 1, when a pirated reproduction, which Shelley tried in 
vain to suppress, won the fame so long denied to the origi- 
nal; early in 1814 he publishes an ironical " Refutation 
of Deism;" during 1814 begins his estrangement from his 
wife, which was due primarily to "a radical incompatibility 
of temperament." although as late as March 23, 1814, he 
secures her legal status by strengthening the original Scotch 
marriage ceremony with a re-marriage under the rites of the 



SHELLEY 331 

Church of England; while he is gradually becoming estranged 
and is being attracted by Mary Godwin, Mrs. Shelley leaves 
her home for her father's house at Bath. 

On July 28, 1 8 14, Shelley leaves England with Mary God- 
win, taking with them Jane Clairmont, daughter of Mary 
Godwin's step-mother and afterward notorious as one of 
Byron's , mistresses ; the party travel through France to 
Switzerland, where Shelley writes to Harriet, proposing that 
she join them ; he is soon obliged to return to England, how- 
ever, by the failure to receive expected remittances; the de- 
tails of this escapade were afterward recorded by Shelley in a 
short monologue entitled "The History of a Six Weeks' 
Tour;" later in 1814 Shelley's wife gives birth to a son, 
and his financial supplies are cut off by the mutual hostilities 
of the Shelleys, the Westbrooks, and the Godwins ; on the 
death of Shelley's grandfather, early in 18 15, the poet's 
father settles on him an annuity of ^"1,000 a year, and he, 
in turn, gives to Harriet ^200 a year ; after a tour of south- 
ern England, he settles for a time in a house at Bishopsgate, 
near Windsor Forest, where he recovers from a threatened 
attack of tuberculosis, and where the solitude inspires his first 
really worthy poem, " Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude," pub- 
lished in 1816 with several of Shelley's minor poems ; dur- 
the winter of 18 15-16 he adds much to his mental culture by 
the study of Greek literature with his friend Hogg and 
Thomas Love Peacock, whom Shelley had met through his 
publisher, Hookham ; in January, 1816, a son is born to 
Shelley and Mary Godwin ; he now gives up his feverish de- 
sire for political agitation, develops more tranquillity of soul, 
and becomes content to influence society through his writings; 
about this time he probably wrote his beautiful prose " Essay 
on Christianity," not published till 1859 — after his death — a 
production that exhibits a great change in the poet's views 
and religious attitude since the wild days of " Queen Mab." 

In May, 181 6, he makes a hasty flight into Switzerland, in 



332 SHELLEY 

company with his wife and Jane, or Claire, Clairmont, doubt- 
less to escape the importunities of Godwin for further loans in 
addition to large sums that Shelley had already given him; 
in Switzerland they meet Byron, who now calls Shelley " the 
most gentle, the most amiable, and the least worldly-minded 
person I have ever met ; " while they are in Switzerland with 
Byron Shelley visits Mont Blanc, and Mary Godwin partly 
composes her novel " Frankenstein ; " returning to England in 
the autumn of 1816, Shelley settles temporarily at Bath ; here 
they are deeply affected by the death of Mary Wollstonecraft, 
Mary Godwin's half-sister, and by the suicidal drowning of 
Harriet Shelley, on December 10, 18 16, in the Serpentine, 
Hyde Park, London ; Shelley's marriage with Mary Godwin 
is legally sanctioned December 30, 18 16, and he attempts 
to gain possession of his two children by Harriet through an 
appeal to the Court of Chancery, but a decision given by Lord 
Eldon, March 27, 181 7, denies his appeal ; early in 181 7 he 
publishes, anonymously, his " Proposal for Putting Reform to 
the Vote Throughout the Kingdom" and later in the same 
year his " Address to the People on the Death of the Princess 
Charlotte; " in September, 181 7, a daughter is born to Shel- 
ley and Mary Godwin, and his family is further increased by 
the coming of Claire Clairmont and her child by Byron; 
among his neighbors at Bath is Leigh Hunt, who had been 
most kind to Shelley during the miseries of the previous win- 
ter, and whom Shelley repaid later with a gift of ;£ 1,400, 
much more than was consistent with the claims of nearer kin- 
dred upon Shelley; through Hunt he meets Keats, though 
their acquaintance never became intimate ; a renewal of im- 
portunities by Godwin for further financial aid now completely 
estranges him from Shelley ; during 181 7 the poet writes, in six 
months, " The Revolt of Islam," which is published in Lon- 
don in 1818 ; this poem was written partly on a seat in Bisham 
wood and partly in a boat among the islets of the Thames ; 
it is bitterly attacked in the Quarterly Review, and is highly 



SHELLEY 333 

praised by Professor Wilson (" Christopher North"), writing 
under the influence of De Quincey, but is otherwise unnoticed ; 
during 1817 Shelley also gives much time to relieving the dis- 
tress of his cottager neighbors at Bath, and writes more polit- 
ical tracts, using the pseudonym "The Hermit of Marlow." 

He again leaves England March 11, 181 8, reaches Turin 
March 21st, and remains in Italy thereafter till his death; he 
spends the spring of 1818 at Genoa and Milan and the sum- 
mer at the baths of Lucca, where he translates Plato's " Sym- 
posium " and completes " Rosalind and Helen;" he goes 
thence to Venice, to deliver to Byron his daughter by Claire 
Clairmont ; at Venice Shelley's own daughter Clara dies, 
and he resides for a time at Este in a villa lent him by Byron; 
here he begins " Prometheus Unbound," and writes " Lines 
on the Euganean Hills," which was published in the follow- 
ing year, with a few other poems ; he also writes "Julian and 
Maddalo " about this time; in November, 1818, he starts 
for Rome, and while on the journey begins his series of in- 
comparable letters to Peacock — letters that place him, in the 
opinion of Leslie Stephen, "at the head of English letter- 
writers. ' ' 

Shelley spends the month of December, 181 8, at Naples, 
where he writes " Lines Written in Dejection; " returning 
to Rome, he remains till June, 1819, when the death of his 
son William causes him to remove to Leghorn and thence to 
Florence ; here his third son, afterward Sir Percy Bysshe 
Shelley, was born ; in November, 1819, after finishing " Pro- 
metheus Unbound," Shelley begins "The Cenci," based on 
the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, whose face had fascinated him 
in the reputed portrait by Guido in the Colonna palace at 
Rome; both " Prometheus Unbound " and " The Cenci " are 
published in 1819-20; while at Florence, in October, 1819, 
Shelley writes the "Ode to the West Wind" (his noblest 
lyric), his parody, " Peter Bell the Third," and "The Masque 
of Anarchy ' ' (provoked by the Manchester massacre of Au- 



334 SHELLEY 

gust, 1819; " Peter Bell the Third " was not published till 
1839; late in 1819 the poet removes to Pisa, which is his 
home, mainly, during the rest of his life ; at Pisa, in July, 
1820, he writes his "Epistle to Maria Gisborne " (growing 
out of a premature project of Shelley and his friend Gisborne 
for a steamboat line between Genoa and Leghorn) ; during 
1820 he writes "The Witch of Atlas" and his anonymous 
burlesque tragedy, " Swellfoot the Tyrant," based on Queen 
Caroline's trial and withdrawn from publication because the 
Society for the Prevention of Vice threatened to prosecute 
the author ; during the same year he writes also " The Sensi- 
tive Plant " and " The Skylark," and completes " Epipsychi- 
dion ; " " Epipsychidion " was partly based on the story of 
an Italian lady, Emilia Viviani, who had been imprisoned in 
a convent to compel her to an obnoxious marriage, and whom 
Shelley met when the "Epipsychidion" had been begun 
but thrown aside ; the poem was published in London in 
1821; while writing "Epipsychidion" Shelley writes also 
his masterly "Defence of Poetry," being an answer to an 
argument by Peacock ; two additional parts of the " Defence 
of Poetry " were planned but never written, and the first part 
was not published till Shelley's prose writings appeared, in 
1840, after his death. 

In 1 82 1, on the death of Keats, Shelley writes and publishes 
at Pisa his " Adonais ; " during this year he visits Byron at 
Ravenna and makes arrangements for him to remove to Pisa ; 
in the autumn of 182 1 the news of the Greek insurrection 
inspires Shelley's " Hellas," which is published in London 
in 1822 ; during 1822 he begins his tragedy on Charles L, 
and makes translations from "Faust" and from Calderon's 
" Magico Prodigioso;" in April, 1822, the Shelleys remove 
to Lerici, near Spezzia, and soon afterward he writes there his 
" Triumph of Life ; " on the arrival at Pisa of Leigh Hunt 
and his apparently dying wife, in May, 1822, Shelley hastens 
thither and aids Byron in making them as comfortable as pos- 



SHELLEY 335 

sible ; he sets sail from Leghorn for Spezzia, July 8, 1822, in 
company with his friend and neighbor, Edward E. Williams, 
but the vessel is caught in a squall and all on board are 
drowned ; on the 18th of July Shelley's body, recognized by 
the volumes of Sophocles and Keats in the coat-pockets, was 
washed ashore near Viareggio ; it was at first buried in the 
sand, but on the 16th of August following, in the presence 
of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney, it was cremated, 
and the ashes were interred in the Protestant cemetery at 
Rome, December 17, 1822 ; his heart, which would not 
burn, was snatched from the flames by Trelawney, was given 
to Mrs. Shelley, and is still in the possession of the family ; 
in 1823 was published a volume entitled "- Poetical Pieces " 
containing "Prometheus Unbound," "Hellas," "The Cen- 
ci," "Rosalind and Helen," and other poems; in 1824 
" Julian and Maddalo " and " The Witch of Atlas," hitherto 
unpublished, appeared in a volume together with the unpub- 
lished "Triumph of Life," the "Epistle to Maria Gisborne," 
and many minor lyrics and translations, the whole entitled 
"Posthumous Poems;" the cost of this publication was 
borne by the poets B. W. Procter and T. L. Beddoes and 
by Beddoe's future biographer, T. Kelsall ; this volume was 
almost immediately withdrawn by an agreement with the 
poet's father, Sir Timothy Shelley, and for several years 
Shelley's poems appeared only in pirated editions, as the 
courts had refused to protect " Queen Mab " with copyright ; 
in 1839 Mrs. Shelley published an authentic edition of her 
husband's poems in four volumes, including some lyrics till 
then in manuscript. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON SHELLEY. 

Arnold, Matthew, "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Mac- 

millan, 205-253. 
Shairp, J. C, "Aspects of Poetry." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 194-218. 



336 SHELLEY 

Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 41-m. 
Lowell, J. R., "Prose Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 4:352-413. 
Godwin, Parke, "Out of the Past." New York, 1870, Putnam, 111- 

144. 
Dowden, E., " Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 

Co., 789-877. 
De Quincey, Thomas, "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, A. & C. Black, 

11: 354-377- 
Stephen, Leslie, " Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 

3 : 64-100. 
Hutton, R. H., "Literary Essays." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 

133-187. 

Kingsley, Charles, " Miscellanies." London, i860, J. W. Burke, 

1 : 304-324. 
De Vere, Aubrey, " Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." New York, 1887, 

Macmillan, 2: 124-133. 
Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." New York, 1878, Ward, 

Lock & Bowden, 309-328. 
Stedman, E. C, "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, v. index. 
Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Holt, 3 : 90-94. 
Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 

London, 1885, Murray, 1 11—156. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 

Fields, 308-318. 
Masson, D., "Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats," etc. London, 1874, Mac- 
millan, 107-142. 
Browning, Robert, "Essay on Shelley." Boston, 1895, Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co. (Works), 1008-1014. 
Bagehot, Walter, "Works." Hartford, 1888, Traveler's Insurance Co., 

1 : 81-134. 
Mitford, M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1851, 

Harper, 315-319. 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets," (Myers). New York, 1881, Mac- 

millan, 4 : 348-356. 
Symonds, J. A., "Shelley." New York, 1879, Harper, v. index. 
Rossetti, W. M., " A Memoir of P. B. Shelley." London, 1886, John 

Stark, v. index. 
Dowden, E., "Life of P. B. Shelley." London, 1887, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 2 vols., v. index. 



SHELLEY 337 

OHphant, Mrs., " The Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 
Macmillan, 3 : 37-53 and 79-103. 

Lang, Andrew, " Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Long- 
mans, Green, & Co , 145-154. 

Lanier, Sidney, " The English Novel." New York, 1892, Scribner, 
94-106. 

Gilfillan, George, "First Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 
185 1, James Hogg, 49-71. 

Home, R. H., "A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 

317-321. 
Craik, G. L., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1866, 

Scribner, 2 : 521-527. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." London, 1852, 101- 

115. 

Hunt, Leigh, "Selections from the English Poets." Philadelphia, 

1854, W. P. Hazzard, 215-229. 
Devey, J., "A Comparative Estimate," etc. London, 1873, E. Moxon, 

239-262. 
Jeaffreson, J. C, "The Real Shelley." London, 1885, Hurst & 

Blackett, 2 vols., v. index. 
Howitt, Wm., "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 

1847, Harper, 489-523. 
Caine, T. H., "Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Elliot Stock, 

191-231. 
Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 

Scribner, I : 81-140. 
Dennis, J., " Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, Young & Co., 

373-389- 
Fuller (Ossoli), Margaret, "Life Without and Life Within." Boston, 

1874, Roberts, 149-152. 
Hillard, G. S., "Six Months in Italy." Boston, 1873, Osgood, 541- 

545- 
Hutton, R. H., " Essays, Theological and Literary." London, 1877, 

Daldy, 2 : 1 18-152. 
Macdonald, G., "Orts." London, 1882, Longmans, Green & Co., 264- 

281. 
Symonds, J. A., "English Men of Letters" (Shelley). New York, 

1879, Harper, 183-189. 
Hazlitt, W., "Johnson's 'Lives' Completed." London, 1854, Gibbings, 

4: 281-285. 
Smith, G. B., "Shelley, a Critical Biography." Edinburgh, 1877, 

Douglass, v. index 
22 



338 SHELLEY 

Chorley, H. S., "The Authors of England." London, 1838, Tilt, 56- 

64. 
Poe, E. A., "Works." Edinburgh, 1874, Black, 4:86-87. 
Swinburne, A. C, " Essays and Studies." London, 1875, Chatto & 

Windus, 184-237. 
Nineteenth Century, 23: 23-40 (M. Arnold). 
Macmillan's Magazine, 56: 1 74- 1 81 (H. D. Traill). 
Tail's Magazine, 12 : 760-761 (De Quincey) ; 13 : 23-29 (De Quincey). 
Fraser's Magazine, 20: 38-53 (J. C. Shairp). 
Century, 22 : 622-629 (G. E. Woodberry). 
Contemporary Review, 46: 383-396 (E. Dowden). 
Academy, 30: 371-374 (T. H. Caine) ; 395-396 (E. Dowden) ; 412 (T. 

H. Caine); 22: 426 (W. Minto) ; 213-214 (T. H. Caine). 
Atkenaum, 1882, 2: 78 (W. M. Rossetti) ; 144 (W. M. Rossetti) ; 176 

(W. M. Rossetti) ; 1887, 1 : 641 (E. Dowden). 
Nation, 44: 146-147 (G. E. Woodberry). 
Academy, 31 : 220-237 (E. Dowden). 
Fortnightly Revfezv, 48: 461-481 (E. Dowden). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Mysticism — Subtlety — Idealism. — " His descrip- 
tions are often strangely unreal. They seem to be enveloped 
in a hazy, wavering atmosphere, as if they were not actual 
scenes but the combinations of a remembered dream. One 
does not look upon them as he looks upon living nature when 
he stands face to face with her beauty ; but they are seen 
through a gauzy medium of memory, like places which may 
have impressed the mind in the earliest period of its conscious- 
ness. . . . Words were often used by him not in their 
common or obvious meaning but in a sense derived from re- 
mote and complicated relations. ... A great fault of 
Shelley's poetry is the obscurity of which so many readers 
complain. ... A frequent cause of his obscurity is the 
excessive subtlety and refinement of his imagination." — 
Parke Godwin. 

" Shelley was a poetical mystic, but a poetical mystic of a 
very unique kind. . . . Shelley's poetical mysticism is, 
in the quick throb of its pulses, in the flush and glow of its 



SHELLEY 339 

hectic beauty and the thrill of its exquisite anguish and 
equally exquisite delirium of imagined bliss, essentially and to 
the last the mysticism of intellectual youth. . . . Shel- 
ley's idealism betrays its genuineness in the sorrowful wail, the 
even hoarsely discordant note, which frequently sings through 
it. He is an idealist to the heart's core. 

There was no inherent strength in his conception of beauty. 
He abstracted it from the world instead of impressing it or 
imposing it on the world. . . . His mysticism arises 
quite as much from his refusal to acknowledge the world be- 
yond as from his reluctance to meddle with the coarse details 
on this side of his chosen sphere. . . . The result of his 
idealism, as of all such idealism, was that he nowhere found 
any true rest for his spirit, since he never came upon any free 
and immutable will on which to lean. . . . The practical 
centre or focus of his meaning lies concealed in his own heart, 
while all that he pictures for us is the secondary effect exerted 
upon himself without the causes which produced it. 
There are no poems which seem more hazy to our age than his 
political and religious dreams." — _R. H. Hutton. 

" Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom and the re- 
flected pine forest in the water pools, watching the sunset as 
it faded and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleet- 
ing things into a tissue where light and music were at one — 
that was the task of Shelley." — Andrew Lang. 

" His poetry is like the subtle veil woven by the witch of 
Atlas from threads of fleecy mists, long lines of light such as 
are kindled by the dawn and star-beams. When he speaks of 
natural scenery the solid earth seems to be dissolved and we 
are in presence of nothing but the shifting phantasmagoria of 
cloudland, the glow of moonlight on eternal snow or the 
golden lightning of the setting sun." — Leslie Stephen. 

" His poetry is, in fact, a kind of air-hung mythology, 
shadowing forth the essential principles of a creed which might 
be called Shelleyism." — David Masson. 



340 SHELLEY 

" His sphere is the unconditioned ; he floats away into an 
imaginary Elysium or an unexpected Utopia; beautiful and 
excellent of course, but having nothing in common with the 
absolute laws of the present world. . . . Living a good 
deal in, and writing a good deal about, the abstract world, it 
was inevitable that he should often deal in fine subtleties, af- 
fecting very little the concrete hearts of real men. 
Many pages of his are in consequence nearly unintelligible, 
even to good critics of common poetry. . . . His intel- 
lect did not tend to the strong grasp of realities : its taste was 
rather for the subtle refining of theories, the distilling of ex- 
quisite abstractions." — Walter Bagehot. 

11 In ' Epipsychidion ' the very mood of mind tends towards 
the intangible ; while the frame-work of imagery or symbol 
remains to this day an enigma to the students of the poetry 
and life of Shelley. . . . But Shelley, like Zeus, was a 
cloud-compeller ; and of his clouds even the most vaporous 
refuses to disperse." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" His aim is rather to render the effect of the thing than the 
thing itself; the soul and spirit of life rather than the living form, 
the growth rather than the thing grown." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" Shelley's ideal nature modified his religious sentiment. 
He was too fond of looking beyond the obvious and 
the tangible to form a merely descriptive poet and too meta- 
physical in his taste to be a purely sentimental one. In gen- 
eral, the scope of his poems is abstract, abounding in won- 
derful displays of fancy and allegorical invention." — H. T. 
Tuckerman. 

" We move in Shelley's world between heaven and earth, 
in abstraction, in dreamland, symbolism : the beings float in 
it like those fantastic figures which we see in the clouds, and 
which alternately undulate and change form capriciously, in 
their robes of snow and gold." — Tame. 

" His whole conception of life is bounded only by illu- 
sions." — Edmund Gosse. 



SHELLEY 341 

" For my part, I feel that some of the visions which Shel- 
ley's poetry conjures up as I read it are but the phantoms, 
showing thin and ghost-like, indeed, when I turn from them 
to the men and women of Shakespeare's plays or Scott's novels. 
He is in endless pursuit of unattainable ideals, ever at the heels 
of the flying perfect." — Edward Dowden. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" There was a Being whom my spirit oft 
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
Amid the enchanted mountains and the caves 
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
Paved her light steps. On an imagined shore, 
Under the grey beak of some promontory, 
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory 
That I beheld her not." — Epipsychidion. 

11 A portal as of shadowy adamant 

Stands yawning on the highway of the life 

Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt. 
Around it rages an unceasing strife 

Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt 
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high 
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. 

And many pass it by with careless tread, 

Not knowing that a shadowy . . 
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead 

Wait peacefully for their companion new. 
But others, by more curious humor led, 

Pause to examine : these are very few, 
And they learn little there, except to know 
That shadows follow them where'er they go." 

— An Allegory. 



342 SHELLEY 

11 There late was one within whose subtle being, 
As light and wind within some delicate cloud 
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, 
Genius and death contended. None may know 
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 
Fail like the trances of the summer air, 
When, with the lady of his love, who then 
First knew the unreserve of mingled being, 
He walked along the pathway of a field, 
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, 
But to the west was open to the sky." — The Sunset. 

2. Lyrical Rapture*. — " The unique rapture of Shelley's 
lyrical cry of dread, of desire, of despair, is his distinguish- 
ing feature as a poet. . . . Other lyrical poets write of 
what they feel, Shelley of what he wants to feel. 
It is in such bursts of song as the ' Song of the Sixth Spirit,' 
or the song ' Life of Life thy Lips Enkindle ' that we find 
lyrics which seem fuller of spiritual fire than any other Eng- 
lish poet has poured into our language. On the whole, he 
seems to have failed in working out any complex conception, 
while his passion is at once more aerial and more sweet than 
that of any other English poet." — R. H. Hutton. 

" Single thrills of rapture, which are insufficient to make 
long poems out of, supply the very inspiration for the true 
lyric. It is the predominance of emotion, so unhappy to 
himself, which made Shelley the lyrist that he was. When 
he sings his lyric strains, whatever is least pleasing in him is 
softened down, if it does not wholly disappear. Whatever is 
most unique and excellent in him comes out at its best — his 
eye for abstract beauty, the subtlety of his thought, the rush 
of his eager pursuing desire, the splendor of his imagery, the 
delicate rhythm, the matchless music." — J. C. Shairp. 

" Shelley outsang all poets on record but some two or 
three throughout all time : his depths and heights of inner and 
outer music are as divine as Nature's and not sooner exhausti- 



SHELLEY 343 

ble. He was the perfect singing-god ; his thoughts, words, 
deeds, all sang together." — A. C. Swinburne. 

"The very isolation and suddenness of impulse which ren- 
dered him unfit for the composition of great works rendered 
him peculiarly fit to pour forth on a sudden the intense 
essence of a peculiar feeling in profuse strains of unpremedi- 
tated art. ' ' — Walter Bagehot. 

"The soul of aspiring youth, un trammeled by canons of 
taste and untamed by schoolboy discipline, swells into rapt- 
ure at his lyric sweetness, finds ambrosial refreshment from 
his plenteous fancies, catches fire at his daring thought." — 
Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 

" Morbid his visions may have been ; but in no modern 
poet, Byron excepted, is the purely lyric spirit so clear-tuned 
and melodious as in the author of ' Alastor. '" — Austin 
Dobson. 

" Indeed, the lyrical parts of the drama [' Prometheus Un- 
bound '] are only surpassed in graceful ease and harmony by 
Sophocles. They rise upon the ear, strains of sweet melody, 
ravishing it with delight, and leaving, after they have passed 
away, the sense of a keen but dreamy ecstasy. " — Parke Godwin. 

" With elevation of meaning, and splendor and beauty of 
perception, he combined the most searching, the most inimi- 
table loveliness of verse-music." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" In none of Shelley's contemporaries was the lyrical fac- 
ulty so paramount ; and whether we consider his minor songs, 
his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowl- 
edge that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer 
of our language. . . . The poem ' Hellas ' is distinguished 
by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at times to the sub- 
limest raptures and closing to the half-pathetic cadence of 
that well-known Chorus ' The world's great age begins 
anew.' . . . The lyric movement of the Chorus from 
1 Hellas' . . . marks the highest point of Shelley's rhyth- 
mical invention." — John Addington Symonds. 



344 SHELLEY 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 

I have never heard 

Praise of love or wine 

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 

Things more true and deep 

Than we mortals dream. 

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 

We look before and after, 
And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 
With some pain is fraught ; 

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 

— To a Skylark. 
" Spirit of Nature ! thou 

Life of interminable multitudes ; 

Soul of those mighty spheres 

Whose changeless paths through heaven's deep silence lie ; 

Soul of that smallest being 

The dwelling of whose life 

Is one faint April sun-gleam ; 

Man, like these passive things, 

Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 

Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 

Which time is fast maturing, 

Will swiftly, surely, come ; 

And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest 

Will be without a flaw 

Marring its perfect symmetry." — Queen Mab. 

* i Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
From creation to decay, 
Like the bubbles on a river, 
Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 



SHELLEY 345 

But they are still immortal 

Who, through birth's orient portal 

And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 

Clothe their unceasing flight 

In the brief dust and light 

Gathered around their chariots as they go : 

New shapes they still may weave, 

New gods, new laws receive : 

Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last 

On Death's bare ribs had cast." — Hellas. 

3. Intellectual Desire — Thirst — Yearning . — 

11 Shelley was essentially the poet of intellectual desire, not of 
all emotion. The thrill of some fugitive feeling, which he is 
either vainly pursuing or which has just slipped through his 
faint intellectual grasp, gives the key-note to every one of his 
finest poems. . . . His ' Skylark ' is a symbol of illimitable 
thirst drinking illimitable sweetness, an image of that rapture 
which no man can ever reach, because it soars so far from 
earth, because it is ever rising with unflagging wing, despising 
old delights. . . . The eager-souled poet of unsatisfied 
desire — always thirsting, always yearning; never pouring 
forth the strains of a thankful satisfaction but either the crav- 
ings of an expectant rapture or the agony of a severed nerve. 
. . . If we look at any of the lyrics on which he has set 
the full stamp of his* genius, we find that it images one of 
these two attitudes of intellect — the keen exquisite sense of 
want gazing wildly forward or wildly backward but vainly 
striving to close on something which eludes its grasp — that is 
the burden of every song. Whether forward or backward 
gazing, the attitude of unsatisfied desire is always the same, 
distinguishing Shelley from the many great contemporaries. 
He cannot be satisfied without a thrill of his whole soul. In 
that constant yearning which he felt for a tingling thrill of 
new intellectual life, there was at times, as there is in all pro- 
found love of excitement, a jarring which is ever reflected in 



346 SHELLEY 

his general demeanor. . . . His poetry is the poetry of 
desire. He is ever the homo desideriorum ; always thirsting, 
always yearning." — R. H. Hutton. 

" Another passion, which no man has ever felt more strongly 
than Shelley — the desire to penetrate the mysteries of exist- 
ence — is depicted in 'Alastor.' He had, in perhaps an un- 
equalled and unfortunate measure, the famine of intellect — 
the daily insatiable craving after the highest truth, which is 
the passion of ' Alastor.' " — Walter Bagehot. 

" The soul of aspiring youth catches fire at his daring 
thought, and melts into boundless weeping at his tender sad- 
ness — the sadness of a soul betrothed to an ideal unattainable 
in this present sphere." — Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 

" We are touched through his poetry with a certain divine 
discontent, so that not music nor sculpture nor picture nor 
song can wholly satisfy our spirits ; but in and through these 
we reach after some higher beauty, some divine goodness, 
which we may not attain yet toward which we must perpetu- 
ally aspire. " — Edward Dowden. 

"The object which he longed for was some abstract intel- 
lectualized spirit of beauty and loveliness, which should thrill 
his spirit unceasingly with delicious shocks of emotion. This 
yearning, panting desire is expressed by him in a thousand 
forms and figures throughout his poetry. It was not mere 
sensuous enjoyment that he sought but keen intellectual and 
emotional delight — the mental thrill, the glow of soul, the 
tingling of the nerves, that accompany transcendental rapt- 
ure." — J. C. Shairp. 

"This persistent upward striving, this earnestness, this pas- 
sionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of inspiration, 
give a quite unique spirituality to his poems." — John Adding- 
ton Symonds. 



SHELLEY 347 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 
Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 
Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
'Tis since thou art fled away." — To a Skylark. 

" Where art thou, beloved To-morrow ? 

When, young and old, strong and weak, 
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, 

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, 
In thy place — ah well-a-day ! — 

We find the thing we fled — To-day." 

— To-Morrow. 

" I pant for the music which is divine ; 

My heart in its thirst is a dying power. 
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine ; 

Loosen the notes in a silver shower. 
Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain, 
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound 

More, oh more ! — I am thirsting yet ! 
It loosens the serpent which care has bound 

Upon my heart, to stifle it ; 
The dissolving strain, through every vein, 
Passes into my heart and brain." — Music. 

4. Awelessness — Curiosity — Irreverence. — " Shel- 
ley's awelessness of nature — 'curiosity,' as Hazlitt calls it — 
is only the result of the limitless longing with which he seeks 
to tear the veil from almost any secret, human or divine ; and 
yet not in the spirit of a thirst for new truth so much as a 
thirst for a new effervescence of nature half-way between 
knowledge and feeling. This characteristic in Shelley is an 



348 SHELLEY 

exceedingly different thing from that species of scoffing wit in 
which Byron attained such pre-eminence, and which consists 
in insolent daring displayed wantonly before the face of a mys- 
terious or sacred Power, without ever caring to penetrate the 
secret of the mystery. Shelley's intellect was far subtler than 
Byron's, and betrayed no fascination for mere acts of intel- 
lectual impertinence. Byron was a grown-up school-boy, with 
a keen pleasure in playing practical jokes on mighty Powers 
in which he half believed. Shelley crept up to them with an 
irresistible longing to peep under the veil and feel a new thrill 
vibrate through his nature. ... I must admit that Shel- 
ley's mind resembles that of the Greeks in not being clothed 
with that ' instructive mutual awe ' which Plato makes, in his 
Protagoras, the natural protection of all human society. 
That eager mind rushing breathlessly along the 
track of imaginative desire, would have needed much to con- 
vince it that any precincts were inviolable." — Ji. H. Hutton. 

" Before nothing would his soul bow down. Every veil, 
however sacred, he would rend, pierce the inner shrine of 
being, and force it to give up its secret. There is in him a 
profane audacity, an utter avvelessness. Reverence to him 
was another word for hated superstition. . . . Nothing 
was to him inviolate ; all the natural reserves he would break 
down." — J. C. Shairp. 

" Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind ; and 
though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling." — 
Walter B age hot. 

"Shelley's nature was peculiarly reverential, but he enter- 
tained certain speculative doubts. Veneration was his pre- 
dominant sentiment. Speculatively he may have been an 
atheist; in his inmost soul he was a Christian." — H. T. 
Tuckerman. 

" If that reverence which was far from wanting in his nat- 
ure had been only presented in the person of some guide to 
his spiritual being, with an object worthy of its homage and 



SHELLEY 349 

trust, it is probable that the yet free and noble result of Shel- 
ley's individuality would have been presented to the world in 
a form which, while it attracted only a few, would not have 
repelled the many." — George Mac Donald. 

"Shelley contributed a new quality to English Literature 
— a quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, 
which severe critics of other nations think we lack." — J. A. 
Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And this is Hell : and in this smother 
All are damnable and damned; 
Each one, damning, damns the other; 
They are damned by one another, — 
By none other are they damned. 

'Tis a lie to say * God damns.' 

Where was Heaven's Attorney General 

When they first gave out such flams ? 

Let there be an end of shams: 

They are mines of poisonous mineral." 

—Peter Bell the Third. 

11 The name of God 
Has fenced about all crime with holiness ; 
Himself the creature of his worshippers; 
Whose names and attributes and passions change — 
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord — 
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
For desolation's watchword: whether hosts 
Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on 
Triumphantly they roll whilst Brahmins raise 
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans." 

— Queen Mab. 

11 Once, early in the morning, 
Beelzebub arose: 
With care his sweet person adorning, 
He put on his Sunday clothes. 



350 SHELLEY 

" And then to St. James's Court he went, 

And St. Paul's Church he took on his way ; 
He was mighty thick with every saint, 
Though they were formal and he was gay. 

A priest at whose elbow the Devil during prayer 

Sate, familiarly, side by side, 
Declared that, if the tempter were there, 

His presence he would not abide. 
1 Ah ah ! ' thought old Nick, ' that's a very stale trick ; 
For without the Devil, O favorite of evil, 

In your carriage you would not ride.' " 

— The Devils Walk. 

5. Acute Sensibility — Sympathy. — " Shelley was en- 
dowed by nature with a sensibility acutely alive to the most 
fleeting shades of joy and pain — warm, full, and unselfish in 
its love, deep-toned and mighty in its indignation. This 
fiery spiritual essence was enclosed in a frame sensitive enough 
to be its fit embodiment. No reader of Shelley can be igno- 
rant that some of the most beautiful exhibitions of the tender- 
est and simplest affections of the heart are to be found in his 
writings ; that he had an ear exquisitely tuned to catch the 
still sad music of humanity, that human hopes and fears and 
loves all woke sympathetic echoes in his heart; that the lan- 
guage of human passions kindles arrd burns along his cre- 
ations, often with a might and freedom almost Shakesperian." 
— E. P. Whipple. 

" His appropriate sphere is what I may call swift sensi- 
bility, the intersecting line between the sensuous and the in- 
tellectual or moral. Mere sensation is too literal for him, 
mere feeling too blind and dumb, thought too cold ; but in 
the line where sensation and feeling are just passing into 
thought . . . his great power lay." — R. H. Hutton. 

" I thought of Shelley — so we all think of him — as a man 
of extraordinary sensitiveness and susceptibility, susceptibil- 
ity, above all, to ideal impressions. . . . Shelley's pri- 



SHELLEY 351 

vate happiness did not dull his sensibility to the wrongs of 
the world. . . . Shelley's sympathetic delight in the in- 
nocent joy of children and all happy creatures did not hinder 
or check a passion of charity for those who were sufferers, 
brethren of his own in sorrow, sickness, and need." — Ed- 
ward Dow den. 

" Shelley's sensibility was vivid but peculiar. 
The nerves of Shelley quivered at the idea of loveliness ; but 
no coarse sensation obtruded particular objects upon him." 
— Walter Bagehot. 

" Shelley seems to us an incarnation of what was sought in 
the sympathies and desires of instructive life, a light of dawn 
and a foreshadowing of the weather of his day." — Margaret 
Fuller Ossoli. 

"It is easy to perceive throughout ['Queen Mab'] that the 
writer's ungovernable sensibilities ran away with his other 
faculti es . " — Parke Godwin. 

" He had the lawlessness of the man with the sensibility of 
the woman." — Charles Kings ley. 

11 Nonconformity of tastes might easily arise between two 
parties without much blame to either when one of the two 
had received from nature an intellect and a temperament so 
dangerously eccentric, and constitutionally carried, by del- 
icacy so exquisite of organization, to eternal restlessness and 
irritability of nerves, if not absolutely at times to lunacy." 
— De Quincey. 

" His poem [' The Sensitive Plant '], the story of a plant, is 
also the story of a soul — Shelley's soul, the sensitive." — Taine. 

" In this have I long believed that my power consists ; in 
sympathy and that part of the imagination which relates to 
sentiment and contemplation I am formed, if for anything 
now in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend re- 
mote and minute distinctions of feelings, whether relative to 
the external nature or to the living beings which surround 
us." — Shelley. 



352 SHELLEY 

" To Mr. Shelley all that exists exists indeed — color, 
sound, motion, thought, sentiment, the lofty and the hum- 
ble, great and small, detail and generality— from the beauties 
of the blade of grass or the evanescent tint of a cloud to the 
heart of a man, which he would elevate and the mysterious 
spirit of the universe, which he would seat above worship 
itself." — Leigh Hunt. 

" The very first letter [of Shelley], as one instance for all, 
strikes the keynote of the predominating sentiment of Shel- 
ley throughout his life — his sympathy with the oppressed." 
— Browning. 

" Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy and 
lofty hope for his kind which is essential both to the birth 
and the subsequent making of the greatest poets." — George 
MacDonald. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Music, when soft voices die, 
Vibrates in the memory ; 
Odors, when sweet violets sicken, 
Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, 
Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
Love itself shall slumber on." — To . 

" Are there not hopes within thee which this scene 
Of linked and gradual being has confirmed — 
Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, 
When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? 
And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod 
Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
Never ; but, bravely bearing on, thy will 



SHELLEY 353 

Is destined an eternal war to wage 
With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
The germs of misery from the human heart. 
Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
(Whose impotence an easy pardon gains) 
Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease." 

— Queen Mab. 
" Men of England, wherefore plough 

For the lords who lay ye low? 

Wherefore weave with toil and care 

The rich robes your tyrants wear ? 

Wherefore feed and clothe and save, 
From the cradle to the grave, 
Those ungrateful drones who would 
Drain your sweat — nay, drink your blood ? 

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 
That these stingless drones may spoil 
The forced produce of your toil ? 

Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? 
Or what is it ye buy so dear 
With your pain and with your fear ? 

The seed ye sow another reaps ; 
The wealth ye find another keeps ; 
The robes ye weave another wears ; 
The arms ye forge another bears." 

— To the Men of England. 

6. Rare Imaginative Power. — " So keen was his in- 
tellectual vision that he saw shapes where others saw none and 
shades and distinctions of shade where, to others, it was blank 
vacuity or darkness. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that 
faculty which peoples the universe with tenuous and gossamer 
23 



354 SHELLEY 

existences, which sees a faery world in drops of dew, which 
sports with the creatures of the elements, which is of finer in- 
sight and more spiritual texture than the brains of ordinary 
mortals. If Shelley errs in the excessive use of this faculty, 
we are also indebted to it for some of the most b'eautiful con- 
ceptions that ever adorned the pages of poetry." — Parke 
Godwin. 

" If Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at 
once the most ethereal and the most gorgeous ; the one who 
has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the most evanescent 
and most magnificent words and imagery." — Leigh Hunt. 

" Excess of imagination makes it impossible for him to re- 
alize and reconcile himself to his surroundings. . . . The 
fact is, Shelley was a poet — and a poet in whom the imagina- 
tion was disproportionally developed. He was a creature not 
of reason, not of intellect, not of moral purpose, not of pas- 
sion, but of feelings and imaginations." — Edward Dow den. 

" If greatness in poetry consisted in a succession of daz- 
zling images and a rapid flow of splendid verse, Shelley would 
be entitled to almost the first place in literature." — W.J. 
Courthope. 

" He possessed an imagination marvellously endowed with 
the power to give shape and hue to the most shadowy abstrac- 
tions which his soaring mind clutched on the vanishing points 
of human intelligence ; a fancy quick to discern the most re- 
mote analogies, brilliant, excursive, aerial, affluent in graceful 
and felicitous images." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His mode of thinking is not according to the terrestrial 
conditions of time, place, cause and effect, variety of race, cli- 
mate, and costume. His persons are shapes, winged forms, 
modernized versions of Grecian mythology, or mortals highly 
allegorized ; and their movements are vague, swift, and inde- 
pendent of ordinary physical laws." — David Masson. 

" The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolator 
in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a cold, 



SHELLEY 355 

hard, dark, metaphysical system he made a gorgeous Pantheon, 
full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. He turned 
atheism itself into a mythology, rich with visions as glorious 
as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias or the virgin 
saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. The 
spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, 
when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They 
took shape and color. They were no longer mere words but 
intelligible forms; ' fair humanities; ' objects of love, adora- 
tion, or fear." — Macaulay. 

11 His images pass before the mind like frost-work at moon- 
light, strangely beautiful, glittering and rare, but of transient 
duration and dream-like interest." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" From hard realities, from weariness of beholding oppres- 
sion, Shelley rose like his own ' Skylark ' into the trackless 
ether of imagination, which he filled with a glorious music 
and a quiver of joyous wings." — Austin Dobson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew ; 

And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night. 

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 
Like the spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 
And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest." 

— TJie Sensitive Plant* 
" Evening came on ; 
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; 
Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day : 
Night followed, clad with stars." — Alastor. 



356 SHELLEY 

" I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 
While I sleep in the arms of the Blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers 
Lightning my pilot sits ; 
In a cavern under is fettered the Thunder, 
It struggles and howls at fits. 
O'er earth and ocean with gentle motion 
This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the love of the Genii that move 
In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills and the crags and the hills, 
Over the lakes and the plains, 
Wherever he dream under mountain or stream 
The Spirit he loves remains; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 
Whilst he is dissolving in rains." — The Cloud. 

7. Intensity. — " Shelley's life was intense, and though 
only in his thirtieth year when his beloved element wrapped him 
in the embrace of death, the snows of premature age flecked his 
auburn locks ; and in sensation and experience he was wont 
to say he had far out-sped the calendar." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" Like an improvisatore, he gives rein to his fancy, and 
dashes wildly onward wherever the bewildering trains of thick- 
coming associations may lead. He was mastered by his genius 
rather than master of it. It was chiefly in the glow and in- 
tensity of his sentiments that the fast fusing power of his im- 
agination was manifest. His heart, burning with the purest 
fires of love, seemed to melt all nature into a liquid mass of 
goodness." — Parke Godwin. 

" The consuming intensity, indeed, with which his soul 
burned within him at the sight and thought of tyranny, 
amounted almost to madness. It ran along his veins like a 
tingling fire. His bursts of vehement feeling appear occasion- 
ally to rend and tear his frame in their passionate utter- 



SHELLEY 357 

ance. . . . What he felt and thought, he felt and thought 
with such intensity as to make his life identical with his 
verse."— E. P. Whipple. 

" Shelley composed with all his faculties, mental, emotional, 
and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of intense 
fervor, striving to attain one object, the truest and most pas- 
sionate investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his 
ever-quick imagination. ... In his intense enthusiasm 
he lost his hold on common sense, which might have saved 
him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. All his sensa- 
tions were abnormally acute, and his ever active imagination 
confused the borderlands of the actual and the visionary. He 
was entirely a child of impulse, lived and longed for high- 
strung emotion, simple, all absorbing, all penetrating emotion, 
going straight on in one direction to its object, hating and 
resenting whatever opposed its progress thitherward." — John 
Addiiigton Symonds. 

"An idea, an emotion grew upon his brain, his breast heaved, 
his frame shook, his nerves quivered with the ' harmonious 
madness ' of imaginative concentration." — Walter Bagehot. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" An old, blind, mad, despised, and dying king, 
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow 
Through public scorn — mud from a muddy spring, — 
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, 
But, leech-like, to their fainting country cling, 
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, — 
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, — 
An army which liberticide and prey 
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, — 
Golden and sanguine laws, which tempt and slay, — 
Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed ; 
A Senate — Time's worst statute unrepealed — 
Are graves from which a glorious phantom may 
Burst to illumine our tempestuous day." — England in i8iq. 



358 SHELLEY 

" Oh let a father's curse be on thy soul, 

And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, 
And both on thy gray head a leaden cowl 

To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom ! 

I curse thee by a parent's outraged love ; 

By hopes long cherished and too lately lost ; 
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove ; 

By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed." 

— To the Lord Chancellor. 

" Horses, oxen, have a home 

When from daily toil they come ; 
Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
Find a home within warm doors ; 

Asses, swine, have litter spread, 
And with fitting food are fed ; 
All things have a home but one — 
Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! 

This is Slavery ! Savage men, 
Or wild beasts within a den, 
Would endure not as ye do ; 
But such ills they never knew." 

— The Masqtie of Anarchy. 

8. Taste for the Horrible. — " Shelley not infrequently 
and purposely dips into curdling subjects, simply for the sake 
of the chill to the blood, the vibration of the nerves. There 
is not one of his longer poems in which he does not alternate 
the breathless upward flight of his own skylark with occa- 
sional plunges into a weird world of morbid horrors. 
There was mingled with all his beauty a mind that was cer- 
tainly unearthly, a vein of unearthly and ghastly delight in 
violating natural instinct, as illustrated, for instance, to take a 
very mild example, in the ghoulish prescription which he 
wrote out under a household recipe of Mary Godwin's. His 
early poems, especially, are full of wormy horrors, and the 



SHELLEY 359 

loathsomeness of the incidents on which the plot of ' The 
Cenci ' turns evidently had a dreadful fascination for him." 
— R. H. Hutton. 

" So far, indeed, from Shelley's having a peculiar tendency 
to dwell on and prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a 
perverse tendency to draw out into lingering keenness the 
torture of agony. The night-shade is as common in his 
poems as the daisy." — Walter Bagehot. 

" He has shown himself what the dramatist needs to be — 
as able to face the light of heaven as of hell, to handle the 
fires of evil as to brighten the beauties of things." — A. C. 
Swinburne. 

" He turns to darkness and mystery and despair and hor- 
ror wantonly, when all the sweeter secrets of nature are open 
to him, and without knowing, with the most curious obtuse- 
ness in the midst of his genius, unfolds all his horrors and 
misery. He revelled in the tempestuous loveliness of terror. " 
— H. T. Tuckerman. 

11 In ' The Sensitive Plant ' one curious idiosyn- 

crasy is more prominent than any other ; ... it is 
the tendency to be fascinated by whatever is ugly and revolt- 
ing, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he 
has described it in language powerful, it is true, and poetic, 
when considered as to its fitness for the end desired, but in 
force of these very excellences in the means, nearly as revolt- 
ing as the objects themselves." — George MacDonald. 

"His hungry craving was for intellectual beauty and the 
delight it yields; if not that, then for horror, anything to 
thrill the nerves, though it should curdle the blood and make 
the flesh creep. " — J. C. Shairp. 

"I agree with Mr. Gilfillan heartily in protesting against 
the thoughtless assertion of some writer in the Edinburgh 
Review — that Shelley at all selected the story of his ' Cenci ' 
on account of its horrors or that he has found pleasure in 
dwelling on those horrors." — De Quincey. 



36O SHELLEY 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

' And plants at whose name the verse feels loth 
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
Prickly and pulpous and blistering and blue, 
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 

Their moss rotted off them flake by flake, 
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake, 
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
Infecting the winds that wander by." 

— The Sensitive Plant. 

" How comes this hair undone ? 

Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, 
And yet I tied it fast.— Oh horrible ! 
The pavement sinks under my feet ! the walls 
Spin round ! I see a woman weeping there, 
And standing calm and motionless, whilst I 
Slide giddily as the world reels ! — My God ! 
The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood ! 
The sunshine on the floor is black ! the air 
Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe 
In charnel pits ! Pah ! I am choked ! 

There creeps 
A clinging, black, contaminating mist 
About me — 'tis substantial, heavy, thick ; 
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues 
My fingers and limbs to one another, 
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves 
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning 
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life ! 
My God ! I never knew what the mad felt 
Before ; for I am mad beyond all doubt ! " — The Cenci. 

" Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven 
Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare, 
And from the frieze to the four winds of heaven 
Hung them on high by the entangled hair ; 



SHELLEY 361 

A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, 

The dwelling of the many-colored worm, 

Hung there ; the white and hollow cheek I drew 

To my dry lips — What radiance did inform 

Those horny eyes ? whose was that withered form ? " 

— Revolt of Islam. 

9. Fearlessness — Sincerity — High Ideals.— " He 

was no tongue-hero, no fine virtue prattler. He did not 
speak from his lungs but from his soul. And sooner than be- 
tray one honest conviction of his intellect, sooner than award 
1 mouth-honor' to what he hated as cruelty and oppression, he 
was willing to have his genius derided and his name defamed. 
He was always terribly in earnest. What he felt 
and thought, he felt and thought with such intensity as to 
make his life identical with his verse. He was a hero in the 
epic life of the nineteenth century. Ideas, abstractions, which 
pass like flakes of snow into other minds, fell upon his heart 
like sparks of fire. . . . He desired society to be pure, free, 
unselfish, devoted to the realization of goodness and beauty; 
and he believed it capable of that exaltation. ... No 
man ever lived with a deeper and more inextinguishable thirst 
to promote human liberty and happiness." — E. P. Whipple. 

" One of the first things to be observed is the elevated con- 
ception which he had formed, and always strove to carry 
with him, of the true function and destiny of the poet. The 
vocation of the bard impressed him as the highest of all voca- 
tions. . . . No poet that has come after him, and few 
that were gone before him, had equal power of stirring within 
the soul of humanity such noble aspirations, such fervent 
love of freedom, such high resolves in the cause of virtue and 
intelligence, and such prophetic yearnings for the better 
fu t u re . " — Parke Godwin . 

" There is a wisdom which the world sometimes counts as 
folly — that which consists in devotion at all hazards to an 
ideal, to what stands with us for the highest truth, sacred jus- 



362 SHELLEY 

tice, purest love. And assuredly the tendency of Shelley's 
poetry, however we may venerate ideals other than his, is to 
quicken the sense that there is such an exalted wisdom as this 
and to stimulate us to its pursuit. . . . Shelley at the age 
of nineteen was possessed by an inextinguishable hope for the 
world and an enthusiasm of humanity which never ceased to 
inspire his deeds and words. . . . He had a conviction 
that it is in the power of everyone, young or old, to do some- 
thing to bring nearer the world's great age; that it is the 
duty of everyone to contribute something to the public good. 
Shelley, in ' Alastor,' would rebuke the seeker for 
beauty and the seeker for truth, however high-minded, who 
attempts to exist without human sympathy ; and he would 
rebuke the ever-unsatisfied idealist in his own heart. . . 
It was, as Shelley believed, in a peculiar degree a poet's duty 
to sustain the hopes and aspirations of men in their movements 
of advance and at the same time to endeavor to hold their 
passions in check by presenting high ideals and showing that 
the better life of society is not to be rung owt of the air by 
sudden and desperate snatching. . . . Shelley is abso- 
lutely free from any touch of untruthfulness in his opinions. 
No idea of self-restraint would ever make him hide his views. 
He could always believe what he wished to believe 
and bring himself to see facts not as they were but as they 
ought to be." — Edward Dowden. 

" Whatever Shelley was, he was with an admirable sin- 
cerity. It was not always truth that he thought and spoke ; 
but in the purity of truth he spoke and thought always." 
— Robert Browning. 

" No man was more single-minded, none a more ardent 
lover of abstract truth and ideal virtue." — IV. M. Rossetti. 

" Balance against all the ill that you can ever think of him 
that he was a man able to live wretched for the sake of speak- 
ing sincerely what he supposed to be truth, willing to die for 
the good of his fellows." — Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 



SHELLEY 363 

" There is in Shelley at once a singularly ethereal nature 
and a singularly unthinking defiance of everything in human 
emotion which does not at once explain itself." — R. H. 
Hutton. 

" The cause for regret is that so few should have paid 
homage to his pure and sincere intentions. Where can we 
find an individual in modern history of more exalted aims 
than Shelley? I honor Shelley as that rare character — a sin- 
cere man." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

"He was the sincerest and most truthful of human creat- 
ures." — De Quincey. 

11 The cardinal characteristic of his nature was an implaca- 
ble antagonism to shams and conventions, which passed too 
easily into impatient rejection of established forms as worse 
than useless. ... To the world he presented the rare 
spectacle of a man passionate for truth and unreservedly obe- 
dient to the right as he discerned it. There was 
ever present in his nature an effort, an aspiration after the 
better than the best this world can show, which prompted 
him to blend the choicest products of his thought and fancy 
with the fairest image borrowed from the earth on which he 
lived. He never willingly composed, except under the im- 
pulse to body forth a vision of the love and light and life 
which was the spirit of the power which he worshipped." — 
John Addington Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" There is a nobler glory, which survives 
Until our being fades, and, solacing 
All human care, accompanies its change ; 
Deserts not Virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
His footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, 
Even when from Power's avenging hand he takes 



364 SHELLEY 

Its sweetest, last, and noblest title — death ; 
The consciousness of good, which neither gold 
Nor sordid fame nor hope of heavenly bliss 
Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
Of universal happiness." — Queen Mad. 

" What are numbers, knit by force or custom ? 
Man who man would be 
Must rule the empire of himself in it ! 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone." — Sonnet. 

il And when Reason's voice, 

Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked 
The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
Is discord, war, and misery — that virtue 
Is peace and happiness and harmony ; 
When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
The playthings of its childhood ; kingly glare 
Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall 
Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
As that of truth is now." — Queen Mab. 

10. Love of Liberty — Independence — Lawless- 
ness. — "He hated oppression and stormed against it; but 
then all rule and authority he regarded as an oppression. He 
was altogether a child of impulse — of impulse one, total, all- 
absorbing. And the impulse that came to him he followed 
whithersoever it went, without questioning either himself or 
it."—/. C. Shairp. 

"If love, justice, hope, freedom, fraternity be real, then 
so is the wiser part of the inspiration of Shelley's radiant 
song. . . . But at the root of all was an absolute refusal 



SHELLEY 365 

to submit to any sort of discipline or to acknowledge any 
form of authority. . . . Any one who attempted to re- 
strain him he dubbed a tyrant, and he invariably refused to 
learn anything when he was taught. . . . Always preach- 
ing justice and tolerance, there are few who have formed 
more unjust opinions and indulged in more intolerant out- 
bursts. ' ' — Edward Doivden. 

" Neither the cruel jibes of his fellows nor menaces of pun- 
ishment on the part of his superiors could bend a will whose 
single law was the self-imposed law of truth. He rejected an 
obedience which could only be performed at the expense of 
self-respect. . . . An over-fine notion of freedom brought 
him into conflict with masters and laws. . . . Every page 
of « Queen Mab ' is a fiery protest against the frauds and des- 
potisms of priest and king. . . . To him the French 
Revolution was not a failure. . . . The evils of that 
frightful upturning of society seemed to him, as they now 
seem to every observant mind, transient, while the good was 
durable. ' ' — Parke Godwin. 

" His whole life through was a denial of external law and 
a substitution in its place of internal sentiment. 
Shelley's cry is, ' There is a law, and therefore I am miserable. 
Why should not the law be abolished? Away with it, for it 
interferes with my sentiments.' . . . Lawless love is 
Shelley's expressed ideal of the relation of the sexes, and his 
justice, his benevolence, his pity, are all equally lawless." — 
Charles Kingsley. 

" Freedom he regarded as the dearest boon of existence. 
. . . Highly imaginative, susceptible, and brave, even in 
boyhood he reverenced the honest convictions of his own 
mind above success or authority." — If. T. Tuckerman. 

" In Shelley we see a certain type of revolutionist, born out 
of due time, and directed to the bloodless field of literature." 
— Edmund Gosse. 

" His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intoler- 



366 SHELLEY 

ance, his impatience of control . . . combined to make 
him the Quixotic champion of extreme opinions." — John 
A aldington Symonds. 

" ' Prometheus Unbound,' however remote the foundation 
of its subject matter and unactual its executive treatment, 
does in reality express the most modern of conceptions — the 
utmost reach of speculation of a mind which burst up all 
crusts of custom and prescription like a volcano, and imaged 
forth a future wherein man should be indeed the autocrat and 
the renovated renovation of his planet. . . . It is the ideal 
poem of perpetual and triumphant progression — the Atlantis 
of Man Emancipated." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" He was in early years first a revolter; he took nothing 
upon authority j he acknowledged no validity in the customs 
and beliefs which past experience had bequeathed to men : 
he must examine every conclusion anew and accept or regret 
it by the light of his own limited thought and observation." 
— G. E. Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A glorious people vibrated again 

The lightning of the nations : Liberty, 

From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 

Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 

Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 

And in the rapid plumes of song 

Clothed itself, sublime and strong — 

As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, 

Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey : 

Till from its station in the heaven of Fame 

The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it ; and the ray 

Of the remotest sphere of living flame 

Which paves the void was from behind it flung, 

As foam from the ship's swiftness, when there came 

A voice out of the deep ; I will record the same." 

— Ode to Liberty. 



SHELLEY 367 

" As an eagle fed with morning 
Scorns the embattled tempest's warning 
When she seeks her aerie hanging 
In the mountain-cedar's hair, 
And her brood expect the clanging 
Of her wings through the wild air, 
Sick with famine ; Freedom so 
To what Greece remaineth now 
Returns. Her hoary ruins glow 
Like orient mountains lost in day ; 
Beneath the safety of her wings 
Her renovated nurslings play, 
And in the naked lightenings 
Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. 
Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies, 
A desert or a paradise ; 
Let the beautiful and the brave 
Share her glory or a grave ! " — Hellas. 

" Honey from silk-worms who can gather, 
Or silk from the yellow bee ? 
The grass may grow in winter-weather 
As soon as hate in me. 

Hate men who cant and men who pray 

And men who rail, like thee ; 
An equal passion to repay 

They are not coy like me. 

Or seek some slave of power and gold 

To be that dear heart's mate ; 
Thy love will move that bigot cold 

Sooner than me thy hate. 

A passion like the one I prove 

Cannot divided be : 
I hate thy want of truth and love — 

How should I then hate thee ? " 

— Lines to a Critic. 



368 SHELLEY 

II. Optimism— Faith in Humanity. — " It was his 

aim as poet to send forth sounds that might shake the reign 
of ' Anarch Custom ' and hasten the blessed era in whose 
coming he believed." — David Masson. 

" He quickens within us a sense of the possibilities of great- 
ness and goodness hidden in man and woman. . . . And 
who has heartened us more than Shelley, with all his errors, 
to love freedom, to hope all things, to endure all things, and 
even while the gloom gathers to have faith in the dawn of 
light ? " — Edward Dow den. 

" All the malignity of his foes and all the suffering which 
fell to his lot only served to make the flame of his philanthropy 
burn the brighter and with a purer radiance." — Walter 
Bagehot. 

" Though he experienced the malevolence of humanity 
himself, he met inhumanity by humanity, and translated into 
his daily life the spirit that breathes through the Beatitudes. 
He counted his days not by the calendars of men but by the 
calendar of nature. Nothing existed that to him was not a 
minister of grace." — G. B. Smith. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The world's great age begins anew, 
The golden years return, 
The earth doth like a snake renew 
Her winter weeds outworn : 
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam 
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 



Another Athens shall arise, 

And to remoter time 

Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 

The splendor of its prime ; 

And leave, if nought so bright may live, 

All earth can take and heaven can give." — Hellas. 



SHELLEY 369 

" Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, 
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 
And, by the incarnation of this verse, 
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
The trumpet of a prophecy ! Oh Wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? " 

— Ode to the West Wind. 

" These are the seals of that most firm assurance 
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength ; 
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
Mother of many acts and hours, should free 
The serpent that would clasp her with his length, 
These are the spells by which to reassume 
An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 

To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite ; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 
To defy power which seems omnipotent ; 
To love and bear ; to hope till hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 
Neither to change nor falter nor repent ; 
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
Good, great, and joyous ; beautiful and free ; 
This alone Life, Joy, Empire, Victory ! " 

— Prometheus Unbound. 



12. Sensualism — Impulsiveness. — "I rather think 
that the late Mr. Bagehot was nearer the mark when he as- 
serted that in Shelley the conscience never had been revealed 
— that he was almost entirely without conscience. 
Of this double nature, this inward strife between flesh and 
spirit, Shelley knew nothing. . . . Shelley may be the 
prophet of a new morality, but it is one that can never be 
realized till moral law has been obliterated from the universe 
and conscience from the heart of man. . . . I am in- 
24 



370 SHELLEY 

clined to believe that, for all his noble impulses and aims, he 
was some way deficient in rational and moral sanity." — J. C. 
Shairp. 

" ' Follow your instincts,' is his one moral rule, confound- 
ing the very lowest animal instincts with those lofty ideas of 
right which it was the will of Heaven he should retain." — 
Charles Kingsley. 

" Shelley's imagination busied itself with fusing together 

mental and sensuous impressions into symbols of rare beauty. 

. A thin world of distilled loveliness and spontaneous 

instinct, but containing nothing that could be called the 

strength of divine love." — R. H. Hutton. 

"Shelley is probably the most remarkable instance of the 
purely impulsive character, to comprehend which requires a 
little detail. . . . We fancy his mind placed in the light 
of thought, with pure subtle fancies playing to and fro. On a 
sudden an impulse arises ; it is alone, and has nothing to con- 
tend with ; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside the fancies, 
constrains the nature ; it bolts forward into action. 
The ' Epipsychidion ' could not have been written by a man 
who attached a moral value to constancy of mind. 
The evidence of Shelley's poems confirms this impression of 
him. The characters which he delineates have all this same 
kind of pure impulse. The reforming impulse is especially 
felt. . . . Shelley's political opinions were likewise the 
effervescence of his peculiar nature. The love of liberty is 
peculiarly natural to the simple impulsive mind." — Walter 
Bagehot. 

" Shelley had all the merit of generous aspirations and feel- 
ings, but he was singularly deficient in self-control. He was 
guided entirely by his impulses ; his impulses were often high 
and lofty, but they had never been controlled." — Edward 
Dow den. 

li His emotional power dominated his intellectual power." 
— Parke Godwin. 



SHELLEY 371 

" His movements are represented as rapid, hurried, and un- 
certain. He would appear and disappear suddenly and unex- 
pectedly ; forget appointments; burst into wild laughter, 
heedless of his situation, whenever anything struck him as 
peculiarly ridiculous." — George MacDonald. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

11 She would have clasped me to her glowing frame ; 
Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed 
On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame 
Which now the cold winds stole ; she would have laid 
Upon my languid heart her dearest head ; 
I might have heard her voice tender and sweet ; 
Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed 
My soul with their own joy. One moment yet 
I gazed — we parted then, never again to meet ! " 

— The Revolt of Islam. 

" See, the mountains kiss high heaven, 
And the waves clasp one another ; 
No sister flower would be forgiven 
If it disdained its brother ; 

And the sunlight clasps the earth, 
And the moonbeams kiss the sea ; 

What are all these kissings worth, 

If thou kiss not me ? " — Love's Philosophy . 

" Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die 

Perchance were death indeed ! Constantia, turn ! 

In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, 

Even though the sounds which were thy voice which burn, 

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep ; 

Within thy breath and on thy hair, like odor, it is yet, 

And from thy touch like fire doth leap. 

Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet ; 

Alas that the torn heart can bleed but not forget ! " 

— To Constantia Singing. 



BYRON, 1788-1824 

Biographical Outline. — George Gordon, sixth Lord 
Byron, born in Hollis Street, London, January 22, 1788; 
father, "a. handsome profligate," who first eloped with a 
marchioness, then, after her divorce, married her, and after 
her death married Gordon's mother for her money; Byron 
was a cripple from his birth, the tendons of one heel being 
so contracted as to cause a limp; Byron's mother's fortune is 
soon wasted, all except an income of ^150 a year, on which 
she retires to Aberdeen with the child, and lives in seclusion 
in Queen Street ; for a time the father occupied separate 
apartments near by, and sometimes petted the child ; but he 
soon obtained money from his wife or his sister and escaped 
to France, where he died in 1791, possibly by his own hand; 
soon afterward Mrs. Byron's income is raised to ,£190, on 
which she and her son continue to live ; as a child Byron is 
treated by his mother with alternate violence and tenderness, 
sometimes worshipped and at others called " a lame brat ; " 
he is passionately attached to his nurse, Mary Gray, and 
learns from Dr. Ewing, of Aberdeen, much of the lore of the 
English Bible ; Byron first attends a private school, then learns 
some Latin from the son of his shoemaker, and is at the 
Aberdeen Grammar School from 1794 to 1798; as a school- 
boy he is "warm-hearted, pugnacious, and idle;" during 
the vacations he visits the mountain districts about Ballanter, 
and dates thence his love of sublime scenery ; in his eighth 
year he falls " violently " in love with a cousin, Mary Drifif, 
and is nearly thrown into convulsions, in his sixteenth year, 
on hearing of her marriage. 

In 1794, Byron succeeds to the peerage, and in October, 

372 



BYRON 373 

1 798, a pension of ^300 is given to his mother by the Govern- 
ment ; soon afterward she goes with Byron to Newstead, where 
there was a property belonging to the family worth about 
^1,500 a year; Mrs. Byron now settles at Nottingham, and 
sends the boy to the private school of one Rogers ; he is tortured 
by the remedies applied to his foot by a quack named Lavendar, 
and writes a lampoon on that worthy; in 1799 ne * s ta ^en 
by his mother to London, is placed under the care of a skil- 
ful surgeon, and is sent to Dr. Glennie's school, near by; 
Glennie finds him " playful, amiable, and intelligent, ill- 
grounded in scholarship, but familiar with scriptures and a 
devourer of poetry ; " while at Glennie's, Byron reads a 
pamphlet account of a shipwreck, which he afterward worked 
up in the plot of his "Don Juan," and here also he writes 
his first love-poem, addressed to his cousin, Margaret Parker, 
who died a year or two later ; Byron declares that his passion 
produced its " usual effect " in preventing sleep and appetite; 
by the summer of 1801 Mrs. Byron's temper and her med- 
dling with the discipline of the boy become insupportable to 
Glennie and to Byron's guardian, Lord Carlisle, and he is 
sent to Harrow, where he becomes the pupil of Dr. Drury, 
who wins the boy's affection and respect ; Byron detests the 
"daily drug" of classical lessons, and is always "idle, in 
mischief, or at play," but reads voraciously by fits, and ex- 
cels in declamation ; he hates Harrow until his last year and 
a half, when he becomes a leader; in spite of his lameness he 
is an athlete, and fights Lord Calthorpe for writing " damned 
atheist " under his name ; in March, 1805, he leads the school- 
boys in a revolt against the appointment of Dr. Butler, Drury's 
successor, whom Byron afterward satirized in " Hours of 
Idleness " under the name of " Pomposus ; " he forms warm 
attachments at Harrow, and once offers to take half the thrash- 
ing inflicted by a bully on Sir Robert Peel ; during his 
Harrow days Byron often visits Annesley Hall, the seat of his 
distant relatives, and there falls desperately in love with his 



374 BYRON 

cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth ; he is greatly agitated on hear- 
ing of her marriage, in 1805, and this passion seems to have 
left the most permanent traces on his li f e. 

In October, 1805, he enters Trinity College as a "noble- 
man ; " he is described by his tutor as " a youth of tumultu- 
ous passions," fond of riding, skating, and boxing, the patron 
of a prize-fighter, and a marvellous swimmer ; in August, 1807, 
he boasts of swimming three miles in the Thames at London ; 
he travels in a two-horse carriage with a groom, a valet, and 
two dogs ; he has frequent and violent quarrels with his 
mother, one of which ends in her throwing a poker and tongs 
at his head ; he is fond of gambling, and at one time travels 
with a girl in boy's clothes for a companion, whom he intro- 
duces as his younger brother; he admits, in 1808, being in 
debt nearly ^10,000 ; at one time he brings a bear to col- 
lege, and insists that the animal sit for a fellowship ; his 
attendance at Cambridge is very irregular, but he takes M.A. 
July 4, 1808 ; in 1813 he presents ^"1,000 to a college 
friend in financial embarrassment ; among his closest friends 
at Cambridge are John C. Hobhouse, afterward Lord Brough- 
ton, whose friendship with Byron lasted during life, and C. 
A. Matthews, a most decided and outspoken atheist ; in his 
juvenile letters Byron boasts that he has been held up as the 
" votary of licentiousness and disciple of infidelity " and that 
he has read or looked through historical books and novels " by 
the thousand; " his memory is remarkable; in November, 
1806, he prints privately a small volume of poems entitled 
" Fugitive Pieces," but soon destroys all but two copies on 
the protest of a Southwell clergyman against the license of one 
poem ; in January, 1807, he distributes a hundred copies of 
the volume, reprinted without the offensive poem, under the 
title of " Poems on Various Occasions ; " this volume attracts 
some favorable notice, and in the following summer he pub- 
lishes " Hours of Idleness," a collection of his original poems 
and translations, including twenty of those before printed 



BYRON 375 

privately ; a new edition of the " Hours " appears in March, 
1808; meantime, in January, 1808, appears the famous criti- 
cism of the Edinburgh Review, probably written by Brough- 
am ; Byron at once "drank three bottles of claret and be- 
gan his reply." 

On leaving Cambridge he settles on his ancestral seat, 
Newstead Abbey, then in ruinous condition, where he makes a 
few rooms habitable, and enters upon life-long litigation to re- 
cover other inherited property; on March 13, 1809, he takes 
his seat in the House of Lords ; his " English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers" appears during the same month, and 
reaches a second edition in April ; a third and a fourth edi- 
tion appear in i8ioand 181 1, but the fifth edition, prepared 
by Byron in 181 1, is by him suppressed because many of his 
victims have then become friendly ; in 1817 Byron tells Mur- 
ray that he will never consent to the republication of the 
satire ; during the spring of 1809 he entertains his college 
friends at Newstead, where they dress as monks, drink wine 
from a human skull, and otherwise offend the proprieties ; on 
July 2, 1809, Byron sails for Lisbon with Hobhouse and 
three servants ; thence he rides across Spain to Seville and 
Cadiz, whence he sails to Gibraltar ; thence to Malta, where 
he meets a Mrs. Spencer Smith, to whom he afterward 
addresses his poem "To Florence" and stanzas 30-33 in 
" Childe Harold," Book II. ; from Malta he sails to Prevesa 
and Tehelen, and narrowly escapes shipwreck ; in November 
he travels to Missolonghi, through Acarnania, with a guard of 
Albanians ; thence, at Christmas time, to Athens, where he 
lodges with Mrs. Macri, widow of the English Vice-consul, 
whose daughter Theresa is Byron's " Maid of Athens;" 
leaving Athens in March, 18 10, Byron visits, successively, 
Ephesus, Constantinople, and the Troad, and on May 3d he 
accomplishes the celebrated feat of swimming, like Leander, 
across the Hellespont from Sestos to Abydos; Byron leaves 
Constantinople July 14th, and returns with his servant to 



376 BYRON 

Athens, while Hobhouse returns to England ; Byron professes 
to have saved a girl from being drowned in a sack, during this 
voyage, an adventure later turned to account in "The Giaour ;" 
he makes a tour in the Morea, is severely ill with a fever at 
Patras, and returns to spend the winter of 1810-11 in the 
Capuchin monastery at Athens; in the spring of 181 1 he sails 
for England, stops at Malta, and reaches London July 15th ; in 
a letter written during the voyage home Byron declares that he 
is returning "embarrassed, unsocial, without a hope, and al- 
most without a desire ; " he had spent over ^10,000 a year 
at Cambridge, and had obtained loans from the Jews ; in 
February, 18 10, his creditors had threatened the sale of New- 
stead ; he prepares to enter the army, and has to borrow 
money with which to reach London on his return from the 
East ; while in London he hears of his mother's illness ; be- 
fore he can reach her she dies, August 1, 181 1, " in a fit of 
rage caused by reading the upholsterer's bills;" the loss of 
his mother and of five intimate friends during four months 
affects Byron deeply, and he is found sobbing over his 
mother's remains; the lady mentioned in his poems as 
" Thyrza," and whom he seems to have loved passionately 
but purely, has never been identified. 

In October, 181 1, he takes lodgings in St. James Street, 
London, where he shows to a friend the first two cantos of 
" Childe Harold," composed while he was abroad, and 
"Hints from Horace," a paraphrase of the " Ars Poetica;" 
arrangements are made to publish the latter, but, apparently 
from the lack of a good classical reviser, it does not appear till 
after Byron's death; "Childe Harold" is refused by one 
publisher because of the attack on Lord Elgin as the despoiler 
of the Parthenon, but it is accepted by Murray, who continues 
thereafter to be Byron's publisher ; " Childe Harold ' ' appears 
April 21, 181 2, and is astonishingly successful ; the first edi- 
tion is sold immediately, and, as Byron says, he "awoke one 
morning and found himself famous ; " for the copyright Mur- 



BYRON 377 

ray pays him ^600, which Byron gives to his friend Dallas, 
declaring that he will never take money for his poems ; during 
the early part of 181 2 Byron makes three speeches in the 
House of Lords ; he becomes " the idol of the sentimental 
part of society," and meets ^Vloore, Campbell, and Rogers at 
a dinner given by the latter, where Byron confines his diet to 
potatoes and vinegar — his method of preventing himself from 
getting too fat; he soon becomes intimate with Moore, al- 
though, during Byron's absence, Moore had sent him a chal- 
lenge because of certain lines in the "English Bards; " at 
this time Byron is described by Coleridge and others as a man 
of surpassing physical beauty ; during this and his later years 
he practised the most rigorous diet in order to reduce his 
weight, and often lived on a small allowance of rice alone ; at 
intervals he varied this rigor, briefly, with the most excessive 
eating and drinking; he is said to have written " Don Juan" 
"on gin and water;" in the spring of 1813 he publishes 
" The Waltz," which he disowns on its failure ; "The Giaour" 
appears in May, 18 13, "The Bride of Abydos" in December, 
1813, and " The Corsair " in January, 1814 ; by the autumn of 
18 13 "The Giaour" reaches a fifth edition, when it is increased 
from 400 to 1400 lines; the first sketch of the "Bride" was 
written in four nights, and the "Corsair" in ten days; the latter 
was hardly revised at all, and 14,000 copies were sold in a single 
day ; in April, 18 14, Byron composes his ode on the abdication 
of Napoleon, and in the following June finishes " Lara," which 
is published in August, 1814, in the same volume with Rogers's 
"Jacqueline; " Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," written on re- 
quest, appeared with music in January, 1815; " The Siege of 
Corinth" and " Parisina " appear in January and February, 
18 1 6, and Murray pays over ^1,200 for the copyright of the 
two poems; about this time Byron refuses to take 1,000 
guineas for the poems, although it was proposed to hand over 
the money to Godwin, Coleridge, and Maturin ; he afterward 
became less scrupulous about receiving money for his literary 



378 BYRON 

work; meantime Byron was prominent in London society, 
was recognized as a second Beau Brummell, and engaged in 
gayeties as a member of half a dozen London clubs ; he en- 
ters into intrigues with various fashionable women, especially 
Lady Caroline Lamb. 

In September, 1814, he offers marriage to Miss Milbanke, a 
niece of Lady Lamb, a scholarly woman, somewhat prudish 
and pedantic, a friend of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Siddons, 
and heiress to a considerable fortune; he is accepted, and is 
married at Seaham near Durham, January 2,1815; m tne f°l~ 
lowing March they settle at 13 Piccadilly Terrace, London, 
where they remain during their married life; in spite of 
numerous reports to the contrary, their early married life 
seems to have been happy ; but Byron's financial troubles 
increased ; he had obtained ^25,000 from a forfeited sale of 
Newstead in 181 2, but this had soon vanished, and in Novem- 
ber, 181 5, he is obliged to sell his library ; yet he still refuses 
to take money for his copyrights ; he becomes a zealous 
playgoer, and is often at parties " where all ends in hiccup 
and happiness ; " in July, 181 5, with the consent and approval 
of Lady Byron, who was well provided for by her own inher- 
itance, Byron wills all his property to his sister, Mrs. Leigh, 
and her children; on December 10, 1815, his only child, a 
daughter, is born, and soon afterward Byron urges his wife to 
go with the child to the home of her father till some arrange- 
ment can be made with his creditors ; as she now believes 
Byron insane, Lady Byron leaves London for her father's 
home January 15, 18 16 ; she writes Byron affectionately, but, 
as the physicians can find no proof of insanity, she decides 
upon a separation ; Byron at first refuses an amicable separa- 
tion, but afterward consents rather than take the case into 
the courts; he is accused " of every monstrous vice," and is 
even threatened with mob violence, although Leigh Hunt and 
others defend his character; in March, 1816, he writes 
"A Sketch" — a scathing attack on Mrs. Clemont, Lady 



BYRON 379 

Byron's maid, who is supposed to have been concerned in 
certain revelations of Byron's wickedness to his wife — and dur- 
ing the same month the lines to his wife beginning " Fare thee 
well," in which he expostulates with her for inflicting a "cure- 
less wound ; " he declares to Moore that no blame attaches to 
Lady Byron; in 1816 he made overtures for a reconciliation 
with his wife but was refused, and wrote "A Dream" and a 
novel called "Marriage of Belphegor," narrating his own 
story, which he destroyed on hearing of Lady Byron's illness, 
although a remnant is given in the notes of " Don Juan." 

He sails for Ostend, April 24, 18 16, and travels in luxurious 
style with Dr. Polidori, a young Swiss, as a companion, and 
two servants ; he soon changes his resolution as to pay for 
literary work, and drives sharp bargains with Murray ; he re- 
ceives 2,000 guineas for the fourth canto of " Childe Harold," 
and by the end of 182 1 has received from Murray ^15,455 
for his copyrights and manuscripts; in November, 1817, he 
finally sells Newstead for 90,000 guineas ; the payment of the 
debts and mortgages leaves him an income of the interest on 
^60,000 during his life; he grows more prudent and " affects 
avarice as a good old gentlemanly vice ; " he visits Brussells 
and Waterloo, and goes thence by the Rhine to Geneva, 
where he takes the Villa Diodati on the south side of the lake; 
here he meets the Shelleys and Miss Clairmont, who had come 
from England expressly to meet him, and the life of the party- 
gives rise to much scandal ; during the summer Byron and 
Shelley make a tour of the lake, are nearly lost in a storm, 
and while spending two rainy days at Ouchy Byron writes the 
"Prisoner of Chillon; " about the same time he completes the 
third canto of " Childe Harold," in which he shows the effect 
of being "dosed to nausea with Wordsworth" by Shelley; 
in the following September Byron makes a tour of the Bernese 
Oberland with Hobhouse, his life-long friend, and takes notes 
on the scenery; while at the Villa Diodati he writes also " To 
Augusta," the verses addressed "To my sweet Sister" (sup- 



380 BYRON 

pressed at her request till after his death), the monody on the 
death of Sheridan, and the fragment called " Darkness; " in 
January, 1817, a daughter by Byron is born to Miss Clair- 
mont, and is sent to him at Venice with a Swiss nurse ; he 
refuses the offer of a lady to adopt the child, places her in a 
convent near Ravenna, where he pays double fees to insure 
her good treatment, and leaves her ^5,000 as a marriage- 
portion ; the child died in April, 1822, and was profoundly 
mourned by Byron, although he was indifferent and even hostile 
to her mother ; in October Byron and Hobhouse cross the 
Simplon to Milan and proceed thence to Venice, where Byron 
resides for the next three years, taking a house at La Mira on 
the Brenta; in the spring of 1817 he visits Rome, and sends 
thence to Murray, in May, a new third act of "Manfred," as 
he had heard that the original was unsatisfactory ; as his 
"mind wants something craggy to break upon," he begins to 
study Armenian at the Venetian Monastery ; later he takes the 
Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal, vi here he plunges into 
"degrading excesses which injured his constitution and after- 
ward produced bitter self-reproach;" here he writes the 
fourth canto of " Childe Harold," "Beppo" (published by 
Murray in May, 1819), and " Don Juan ; " the first five 
cantos of "Don Juan" are published without the name of 
either author or publisher, and Byron is somewhat discon- 
certed at the outcry against it; in 1819 he " falls in love " 
with the Countess Guiccioli, an Italian beauty of sixteen, re- 
cently married to a man of sixty; he visits her at Ravenna, 
with the consent of her husband, studies medicine in order to 
aid her in recovering her health, and follows her to Bologna; 
in the absence of the Count, Byron travels with the Countess 
to Venice by way of the Euganean hills, and then establishes 
her at his house at La Mira ; Venetian society is shocked, and 
" English tourists stared at Byron like a wild beast ; " at Ra- 
venna Byron had written " River That Rollest by the Ancient 
Walls," and from Bologna he had sent to Murray his " Letter 



BYRON 381 

to My Grandmother's Review ; " Count Guiccioli asks Byron 
for a "loan " of ^£1,000, and Moore advises Byron to give 
the money and return the Countess, but Byron insists that he 
will "save both the lady and the money; " in October, 1819, 
the Countess returns to her husband, and Byron talks of visit- 
ing England and dreams of settling in Venezuela in Bolivar's 
new republic ; after all the preparations are made for the trip 
to England, he suddenly changes his plans, accepts the invita- 
tion of the Countess to visit her, and is back in Ravenna at 
Christmas time, 1819 ; his daily routine at this time and dur- 
ing his later life was as follows : " He rose very late, took a 
cup of green tea, had a biscuit and soda-water at two, rode 
out and practised shooting, dined most abstemiously, visited 
in the evening, and returned to read or write till two or three 
in the morning; " in disgust at the reception given to " Don 
Juan," he discontinues it after the fifth canto ; in February, 
1820, he translates " Morgante Maggiore " and in March the 
Francesca da Rimini episode ; he begins his first drama, 
" Marino Faliero" April 4th, and finishes it July 16th ; it is 
produced in London during the following spring, and fails, 
much to Byron's annoyance; early in 182 1 he begins his 
" Sardanapalus, " and finishes it May 1 3th, writing the last three 
acts in a fortnight ; he writes " The Two Foscari " within a 
month and "Cain" in less than two months; during this 
same year, 182 1, he also writes "The Deformed Trans- 
formed," and begins his dramatization, " Werner; " early in 
182 1 he writes his vigorous letters on the Pope controversy ; 
his dramas, written at this period, are "often mere prose 
broken into apparent verse; " "no literary hack could have 
written more rapidly, and some could have written as well." 
In July, 1 82 1, the Countess Guiccioli is divorced from her 
husband by a Papal decree and retires to a villa, where Byron 
visits her frequently, passing the intervals in " perfect 
solitude;" Byron now becomes connected with the revolu- 
tionary movement in Italy, contributes funds, and is made 



382 BYRON 

head of the Americani, a section of the Carbonari or revo- 
lutionary party ; when the scheme is destroyed by the Aus- 
trian troops, Byron's associates are banished, and strong 
pressure is placed upon him to induce him to leave Italy ; at 
this time he has an income of ^4,000 a year, and devotes 
^1,000 to charity; he calls Shelley from Pisa to advise him, 
and finally leaves Venice for Pisa in October, 182 1, "preceded 
by his family of monkeys, dogs, cats, and pea-hens; " on the 
way he meets Rogers at Bologna ; he settles at the Casa Lan- 
franchi in Pisa, and the relatives of the Countess Guiccioli 
occupy a part of the same palace ; at Pisa he is socially inti- 
mate with Trelawney and Shelley ; he continues " Don Juan," 
by permission of the Countess, and has finished cantos six, 
seven, and eight by August, 1822; meantime "Cain" had 
been received with hostility, and Murray had grown cautious 
about publishing more of Byron's works ; Byron and Shelley 
now propose to found a revolutionary paper with Leigh Hunt 
for editor, and they import that unfortunate genius from Lon- 
don with his wife and six children ; the Hunt family take up 
their residence in Byron's palace ; the paper, called The Lib- 
eral, survives through only four numbers, and contains By- 
ron's "Vision of Judgment," his "Letter to My Grand- 
mother's Review,". his " Heaven and Earth," his "Blues," 
his " Morgante Maggiore," and a few epigrams ; in the pub- 
lication of the "Vision of Judgment" culminated a long 
and savage quarrel between Byron and Southey, during which 
Byron had challenged Southey, though the challenge had been 
suppressed by Byron's friend Kinnaird ; during the summer 
of 1822 Byron is forced to leave Pisa by a stabbing affray 
between his servants and the soldiery, and he spends several 
months with the Countess Guiccioli near Leghorn ; during 
the summer occurred the drowning of Shelley and the famous 
cremation of his body by Byron, Trelawney, and others. 

From Pisa, late in the summer of 1822, Byron removes his 
household to Genoa, where he settles in the Casa Salucci at 



BYRON . 383 

Albaro ; during the summer he had swum with Trelawney out 
to his schooner, three miles and back ; at Genoa he meets 
Lady Blessington, who has since recorded her conversations 
with him ; he grows more restless, declares that he does not 
think literature his vocation, and says that if he lives ten years 
longer he will do something ; when the Greek committee is 
formed in London, in the spring of 1823, Byron, at Trelaw- 
ney's suggestion, is made a member; on July 15th he sails 
from Genoa for the Levant with Trelawney and several ser- 
vants in a " collier-built tub," which he had bought and fitted 
out ; he takes 10,000 crowns of specie and 40,000 in bills ; on 
the way they touch at Leghorn, where Byron secures a copy of 
verses from Goethe ; they reach Cephalonia August 2d, and 
Byron remains there at a village called Metaxata till December 
27th, while Trelawney and the rest go forward; he sails for 
Missolonghi December 28th, and reaches there after narrow 
escapes from shipwreck and capture by the Turks ; he raises 
funds for the Greeks on his own credit, and in January is 
made commander-in-chief of the Greek troops; while severely 
ill in January, he courageously awes a crowd of mutineers, who 
had broken into his room ; in the spring of 1824, while still 
at Missolonghi, Byron declines an appointment as " governor- 
general of Greece ;" he continues to starve himself to prevent 
obesity, but his health is seriously undermined by the mala- 
rial conditions at Missolonghi ; he frees certain Turkish 
prisoners at Missolonghi, and adopts a child found among 
them ; he dies of fever and bad medical treatment at Misso- 
longhi, April 19, 1824 ; his body was buried at Hucknall 
Forkard, England. 



384 BYRON 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BYRON. 

Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, 1: 

267-299. 
Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 

163-205. 
Jeffrey, F., " Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, A. Hart, 

6 : 3i 6 -335 and 434-446. 
Morley, J., "Critical Miscellanies." New York, 1893, Macmillan, I: 

203-253. 
Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 

Greene & Co., 1 70-180. 
Hazlitt, Wm., "Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, G. Bell Son, 117- 

135. 

Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 

1 : 45 8 "49 2 - 

Kingsley, Chas., "Literary and General Essays." New York, 1890, 

Macmillan, 35-61. 
Mazzini, J., "Essays." London, 1887, Walter Scott, 82-109. 
Elze, K., "Byron, a Biography." London, 1872, Murray, 377-433. 
Swinburne, A. C, "Essays and Studies." London, 1875, Chatto & 

Windus, 238-259. 
Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Ward & 

Lock, 287-307. 
Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." London, 1888, Macmillan, 163- 

204. 
Scott, Sir W., "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." Philadelphia, 

1 841. Carey and Hart, 244-265. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1848, 165- 

174. 
Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Symonds). London, 1881, Macmil- 
lan, 4 : 244-256. 
Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 24-28. 
Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890. Scribner, 

56-63. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 

2 : 163-199. 

Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1852, J. Hogg, 2 : 

27-42. 
Hannay, J., " Satire and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 204-218. 



BYRON 385 

Nichol, J., " English Men of Letters " (Byron). New York, 1880, Har- 
per, 198-212. 
Collier, W. F., " History of English Literature." London, 1892, Nel- 
son, 385-392. 
Oliphant, Mrs., " Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 

Macmillan, 3 : 9-36 and 44-94 and 95-132. 
Moore, T., "Life, Letters, and Journal of Byron." London, 1866, 

Murray, v. index. 
Mather, J. M., "Popular Studies." London, 1892, Warne, 79-97. 
Caine, T. H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, E. Stock, 91-119. 
Chorley, H. F., "The Authors of England." London, 1888, C. Tilt, 

14-21. 
Courthope, \V. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 

London, 1885, Murray, m-156. 
Dennis, J., " Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, 344-364. 
Devey, J., " A Comparative Estimate." London, 1873, Moxon, 184-21 1. 
Friswell, J. H., " Essays on English Writers." London, 1880, Low 

& Marston, 315-327. 
Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 

Scribner, 5-71. 
Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., 261-276. 
, Castelar, E., " Byron and Other Sketches." New York, 1876, Harper, 
2 : 331-402. 
Scherer, E., "Essays in English Literature." New York, 1891, Scrib- 
ner, 174-225. 
Bookman, 5 : 63-66 (A. Lang). 
Harper's Weekly, 41 : 270 (W. D. Howells). 
Scribner' 's Monthly, 22 : 345-359 (F. B. Sanborn) ; 21 : 501 -5 17 (F. B. 

Sanborn). m 

Fortnightly Review, 40 : 189-262 (G. S. Venables) ; 14 : 650-673 (J. 

Morley). 
Academy, 23 : 357-358 (T. H. Caine). 
Methodist Review, 48 : 666-686 (C T. Winchester). 
Nation, 46 : 66-68 (G. E. Woodberry). 
Knickerbocker Magazine, 21 : 199-212 (Carlyle). 

Edinburgh Review, 53 : 544-572 (Macaulay) ; 11 : 285-289 (H. Brough- 
am) ; 38 : 27-48 (Jeffrey) ; 27 : 277-310 (Jeffrey) ; 30 : 87-120 (Prof. 
Wilson). 
North American Review, 60 : 64-86 (E. P. Whipple). 
Eraser's Magazine, 48 : 568-576 (C. Kingsley). 
Quarterly Review, 16 : 172-178 (Sir Walter Scott). 
25 



386 BYRON 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Intensity — Passion. — " His passion is perfect — a 
fierce and blind desire, which exalts and impels his verse into 
the high plane of emotion and expression. He feeds upon 
nature with a holy hunger, follows her with a divine lust, as 
of gods chasing the daughters of men. Wind and fire, the 
cadences of thunder and the clamors of the sea, gave to him 
no less a sensual pleasure than a spiritual sustenance." — 
A. C. Swinburne. 

" The tremendous depth and intensity of passion, which 
Byron was capable of representing with such marvellous skill 
of expression, is powerfully displayed in his misanthropical 
creations, and tends to give them much of the sorcery they 
exercise on the feelings. . . . He is eminently a poet of 
passion. In almost all the changes of his mood the same 
energy of feeling glows in his verse. The thought or emotion 
uppermost in his mind at any time, whether it be bad or good, 
seems to sway, for the moment, all the faculties of his nature. 
He has a passionate love for evil, a passionate love for nature, 
for goodness, for beauty, and we may add, a passionate love 
for himself."— .£. P. Whipple. 

" In his nervous and manly lines we find no amplification 
of common sentiments — no ostentatious polishing of pretty 
expressions. On the contrary, we have a perpetual stream of 
thick-coming fancies — an eternal spring of fresh-blown images, 
which seem called into existence by the sudden flash of those 
glowing thoughts and overwhelming emotions that struggle for 
expression through the whole flow of his poetry, and impart 
a diction that is often absurd and irregular, a force and charm 
which frequently realize all that is said of inspiration." — 
Fra7icis Jeffrey. 

" There was the heart, ardent at the call of freedom or of 
generous feeling, and belying every moment the frozen shrine 
in which false philosophy had incarved it, glowing like the 



BYRON 387 

intense and concentrated alcohol, which remains one single 
but burning drop in the centre of the ice which its more 
watery particles have formed." — Sir Walter Scott. 

" If ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, 
it was Byron's. This promptitude to extreme emo- 
tions was with him a family legacy and the result of educa- 
tion. . . . When he went to school his friendships were 
passions. . . . Small or great, the passion of the hour 
swept down upon his mind like a tempest, roused him, trans- 
ported him into either imprudence or genius. . . . All 
styles appear dull and all souls sluggish beside his. . . . 
There were internal tempests within him, avalanches of ideas, 
which found issue only in writing." — Taine. 

" His passionate nature could alone produce such a sarcasm 
as ' Don Juan.' . . . The vigorous reality which breaks 
forth in Byron's verses reproduces all the being of the poet in 
each one of those cadences which exhibit the beatings of his 
heart. . . . His poetry is always illuminated by a ray of 
lightning." — Emilio Castelar. 

" Byron was too violent, and for that reason not true enough 
to answer the lasting needs of the soul." — Edmond Scherer. 

" Byron's mind was the battle field of contending im- 
pulses. . . . The intensity of his feelings imparts to his 
style a splendor and passion that raises it [' Childe Harold '] 
far above the diction of his earlier poems. . . . Looking 
at his poetry from a purely lyrical standpoint, it is surely im- 
possible for any man not to be carried away on the tide of its 
power and passion." — W. H. Courthope. 

"It is hardly too much to say that Lord Byron could ex- 
hibit only one man and one woman — a man proud, moody, 
cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a 
scornerof his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep 
and strong affection ; a woman all softness and gentleness, 
loving to caress and be caressed, but capable of being trans- 
formed by passion into a tigress." — Macaulay. 



388 BYRON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

11 1 am too well avenged ! but 'twas my right ; 
Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent 
To be the Nemesis who should requite — 
Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument. 
Mercy is for the merciful ! — if thou 
Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now. 
Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep !— 
Yes ! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel 
A hollow agony which will not heal, 
For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep ; 
Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap 
The bitter harvest of a woe as real ! " — To Lady Byron. 

11 The cold in clime are cold in blood, 
Their love can scarce deserve the name ; 
But mine was like the lava flood 
That boils in Aetna's breast of flame. 

If changing cheek and scorching vein, 

Lips taught to writhe but not complain, 

If bursting heart and madd'ning brain 

And daring deed and vengeful steel 

And all that I have felt and feel 

Betoken love — that love was mine, 

And shown by many a bitter sign." — The Giaour. 

" Souls who dare use their immortality — 

Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in 

His everlasting face and tell Him that 

His evil is not good ! If He has made, 

As He saith — which I know not nor believe — 

But, if He made us — He cannot unmake : 

We are immortal! Nay, He'd have us so, 

That He may torture : let Him! He is great — 

But, in His greatness, is no happier than 

We in our conflict ! Goodness would not make 

Evil : and what else hath He made ? But let Him 

Sit on His vast and solitary throne, 



BYRON 389 

Creating worlds, to make eternity 

Less burdensome to His immense existence 

And unparticipated solitude ; 

Let Him crowd orb on orb : He is alone, 

Indefinite, indissoluble tyrant ; 

Could He but crush Himself, 'twere the best boon 

He ever granted ; but, let Him reign on, 

And multiply Himself in misery !" — Cain. 

2. Misanthropy — Malignity. — " He was completely 
master of the whole rhetoric of despair and desperation. . . . 
Over all these works, amid the most brilliant shows of wit 
and imagination, are thrown the sable hues of misanthropy 
and despair. They are all held in the bondage of one frown- 
ing and bitter feeling. . . . They all display the gulf of 
darkness and despair into which great genius is hurried when 
it is delivered over to bad passions. . . . His misan- 
thropy, real or affected, sometimes induced him to give 
prominence to qualities essentially unpoetical. The frequent 
pervasion of his powers and the unhealthy moral atmosphere 
which surrounds some of his splendid expressions have given 
rise to a sarcastic epigram, which declares that his ethical 
system is compounded of misanthropy and licentiousness, the 
first command of which is, ' Hate your neighbor, and love 
your neighbor's wife.' " — E. P. Whipple. 

" Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole 
eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah 
was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could ex- 
haust its perennial waters of bitterness. . . . Year after 
year and month after month he continued to repeat that to 
be wretched was the destiny of all ; that to be eminently 
wretched is the destiny of the eminent ; that all the desires 
by which we are cursed lead alike to misery — if they are not 
gratified, to the misery of disappointment ; if they are grati- 
fied, to the misery of satiety. His heroes are men who have 
arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who 



390 BYRON 

are sick of life, who are at war with society, . . . and 
who to the last defy the whole power of earth and heaven. 
He always described himself as a man of the same kind with 
his favorite creations ; as a man whose heart had been 
withered, whose capacity for happiness was gone and could 
not be restored, but whose invincible spirit dared the worst 
that could befall him here or hereafter. . . . There was 
created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts a perni- 
cious and absurd association between intellectual power and 
moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew 
a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptu- 
ousness, a system in which the great commandments were, to 
hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife." — 
Macaulay. 

" There is the canker of misanthropy at the core of all he 
touches. . . . We are acquainted with no writing so well 
calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusi- 
asm and gentle affection — all respect for themselves, and all 
love for their kind — and actually to persuade them that it is 
wise and manly and knowing to laugh not only at self-denial 
and restraint but at all aspiring ambition and all warm and 
constant affection. ... It seems to be Lord Byron's 
way never to excite a kind or noble sentiment without mak- 
ing haste to obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery or 
relentless abuse and taking pains to show how well these pass- 
ing fantasies may be reconciled to a system of resolute misan- 
thropy. . . . We do not consider it unfair to say that 
Lord Byron appears to us to be the zealous apostle of a cer- 
tain fierce and magnificent misanthropy, which has already 
saddened his poetry with too deep a shade, and not only led 
to a great misapplication of great talents, but contributed to 
render popular some very false estimates of the constituents 
of human happiness and merit." — Francis Jeffrey. 

11 What doe's he find in science but deficiencies, and in re- 
ligion but mummeries ? Does he so much as preserve poetry ? 



BYRON 391 

Of the divine mantle, the last garment which a poet respects, 
he makes a rag to stamp upon, to wring, to make holes in, 
out of sheer wantonness. ... A darkness which seems 
eternal fell upon his soul, so that at times he saw evil in 
everything. . . . Byron, being unhappy, distinguished 
himself among all other poets as Satan is distinguished among 
all angels." — Effitlio Castelar. 

" Moody and misanthropical, he rejected the whole manner 
of thought of his predecessors ; and the scepticism of the 
eighteenth century suited him as little as its popular be- 
lief. . . . He proclaimed to the world his misery and 
despair." — Thomas Arnold. 

''It [' Don Juan '] is a work full of soul, bitterly savage in 
its misanthropy." — Goethe. 

"In ' Don Juan ' he pours forth a flood of cynical con- 
tempt on the high-strung romantic and sentimental fancies 
dear to that popular taste which he had himself done so 
much to encourage." — W. H. Courthope. 

" Byron wandered through the world, sad, gloomy, and un- 
quiet ; wounded and bearing the arrow in his wound. 
The emptiness of the life and death of solitary individuality 
has never been so powerfully and efficaciously summed up as 
in the pages of Byron." — Mazzini. 

"He veneered the true and noble self which gave life to 
his poetry with a layer of imperfectly comprehended cynicism 
and weak misanthropy, which passed with him for worldly 
wisdom." — J. A. Symonds. 

" [In speaking of ' Don Juan '] These are the words of a 
sceptic, even of a cynic — it is in this he ends. Sceptic through 
misanthropy, cynic through bravado, a sad and combative 
humor always impels him. . . . You see clearly that he 
is always the same, in excess and unhappy, bent on destroy- 
ing himself." — Taine. 



392 BYRON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Oh man ! thou feeble tenant of an hour, 
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power, 
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, 
Degraded mass of animated dust ! 
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, 
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit ! 
By nature vile, ennobled but by name, 
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. 
Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn, 
Pass on — it honors none you wish to mourn : 
To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ; 
I never knew but one, and here he lies." 

— Epitaph on a Newfoundland Dog. 

" I have not loved the world, nor the world me : 
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed 
To its idolatries a patient knee — 
Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud 
In worship of an echo ; in the crowd 
They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
Among them but not of them ; in a shroud 
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 
Had I not filled my mind, which thus itself subdued." 

— Childe Harold. 

" Dogs or men !— for I flatter you in saying 
That ye are dogs — your betters far — ye may 
Read, or not read, what I am now essaying 
To show ye what ye are in every way ; 
As little as the moon stops for the baying 
Of wolves, will the bright muse withdraw one ray 
From out her skies — there howl your idle wrath 
The while she silvers o'er your gloomy path." 

— Don Juan. 

3. Egotism — Self- Revelation. — " No poet ever 
stamped upon his writings a deeper impress of personality or 



BYRON 393 

viewed outward objects in a manner more peculiar to himself. 
Everything about him was intensely subjective, individual, 
Byronic. . . . Self is ever uppermost in his mind. The 
whole world is called upon to listen to the recital of the joys 
and the agonies of George Gordon, Lord Byron. . . . 
He tells his thousands of readers that they are formed of more 
vulgar clay than himself, that he despises them from his in- 
most heart, that their life is passed in a bustling oscillation 
between knavery and folly, and that all mankind is but a 
degraded mass of animated dust. ... In whatever atti- 
tude he places himself, he evidently intends it to be the one 
which shall excite admiration or honor. . . . He grad- 
ually came to consider the world as made for him and uncon- 
sciously to subordinate the interests and happiness of others 
to his own. . . . We think that this egotism or selfish- 
ness in Byron was the parent of most of his vices, inasmuch 
as it emancipated his mind from the burden of those duties 
which grow out of a man's relations with society." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

" He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end 
of his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object in 
every landscape. . . . There can be no doubt that this 
remarkable man owed the vast influence which he exercised 
over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy ego- 
tism as to the real power of his poetry." — Macaulay. 

" Never, in the first flight of his thoughts, did he liberate 
himself from himself. He dreams of himself and sees himself 
throughout. . . . He meditated too much upon himself 
to be enamored of anything else. . . . No such great 
poet has had so narrow an imagination ; he would not meta- 
morphose himself into another. They are his own sorrows, 
his own revolts, his own travels, which ... he intro- 
duces into his verses." — Taine. 

" ' Je suis en moi Finfini) exclaimed Byron, and this in- 
finity of egotism left him in the end, like Napoleon, defeated 



394 BYRON 

and defrauded, narrowed into the bounds of a small solitary 
and sterile island in the great ocean of human existence — or 
would have left him so had not Greece summoned him and 
Missolonghi set him free." — Edward Dowden. 

" He has treated hardly any subject but one — himself; now 
the man in Byron is a nature even less sincere than the poet. 
This beautiful and blighted being is at bottom a coxcomb. 
He posed all his life long." — Edmond Scherer. 

" In Byron the Ego is revealed in all its pride of power, 
freedom, and desire, in the uncontrolled plenitude of all its 
faculties. The world around him neither rules nor tempts 
him. The Byronian Ego aspires to rule it. Byron 

stamps every object he portrays with his own individuality." 
— Mazzini. 

" That diversity of character which dramatists represent 
through fiction's personages, Byron assumed himself; and he 
was either the villain, the enthusiast, the lover, or the jester, 
according as the wantonness of his omnipotent genius sug- 
gested. . . . He has not left a scrap of writing upon 
which he did not stamp an image of himself." — Thomas 
Moore. 

" Childe Harold may not be, nor do we believe he is, 
Lord Byron's very self, but he is Lord Byron's picture sketched 
by Lord Byron himself." — Walter Scott. 

11 He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all out- 
ward things, sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys 
dark night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom, ' in cell 
monastic' ... In reading Lord Byron's works, he him- 
self is never absent from one's mind." — William Hazlitt. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And now was Childe Harold sore sick at heart, 
And from his fellow-bacchanals would flee ; 
'Tis said at times the sullen tear would start, 
But pride congealed the drop within his ee : 



BYRON 395 

Apart he talked in joyous reverie, 
And from his native land resolved to go 
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea ; 
With pleasure drugg'd, he almost longed for woe, 
And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below." 

— Childe Harold. 

" Childe Harold had a mother — not forgot, 
Though parting from that mother he did shun ; 
A sister whom he loved, but saw her not 
Before his weary pilgrimage begun : 
If friends he had, he bade adieu to none. 
Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel. 
Ye, who have known what 't is to dote upon 
A few dear objects, will in sadness feel 
Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal." 

— Childe Harold. 

" God help us all ! God help me too ! I am, 
God knows, as helpless as the Devil can wish, 
And not a whit more difficult to damn 
Than is to bring to land a late-hooked fish 
Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb ; 
Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish 
As one day will be that immortal fry 
Of almost everybody born to die." 

— Vision of Judgment. 

4. Power of Invective. — " He laid bare the cant of 
English society and the corruption of the aristocracy, and 
lashed them with a whip of scorpions. He illustrated and de- 
nounced the social tyranny by which thousands were driven 
into crime and prevented from returning to virtue. The ar- 
rows of his scorn fell fast and thick among the defenders of 
political abuses. The renegade, the hypocrite, the bigot, 
were made to feel the full force of his merciless invective. 
Wielding an uncontrolled dominion over language, and pro- 
fusely gifted with all the weapons of sarcasm, hatred, and con- 
tempt, he battled fiercely in the service of freedom, and knew 



39^ BYRON 

well how to overwhelm its adversaries with denunciations and 
stormy threats, with ridicule and irony, which should eat into 
their hearts as rust into iron." — E. P. Whipple. 

" We trace an element of indignation in nearly all his sub- 
sequent poems, which break too frequently into invectives 
against unworthy or mistaken objects of his spleen. 
If Byron desired fame, he achieved it in fair and full measure 
in his satire. . . . Satire, which at the outset of Byron's 
career crawled like a serpent, has here [in ' Don Juan '] ac- 
quired the wings and mailed panoply of a dragon." — John 
Addington Symonds. 

" All the Satanic qualities with which he is supposed to 
have been endowed were called out of the depths of his heart 
by this satire [' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers '] — cyni- 
cism, irony, sarcasm, anger, hatred, and the thirst for ven- 
geance. The immortal cripple, like Vulcan with his red-hot 
hammer, ascended the English Olympus and spared none of 
the statues of the gods." — E??iilio Castelar. 

" How many well-regulated minds has he not lashed or 
laughed into rage ! The ' English Bards and Scotch 

Reviewers ' could not fail to make a stir, consisting as it did 
of a rolling fire of abuse against nearly all the most conspicu- 
ous literary men of his time." — W. M. Rossetti. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" May the strong curse of crushed affections light 
Back on thy bosom with reflected blight ! 
And make thee in thy leprosy of mind 
As loathsome to thyself as to mankind ! 
Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate, 
Black — as thy will for others would create : 
Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, 
And thy soul welter in its hideous crust. 
Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed — 
The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread ! 



BYRON 397 

Then, when thou fain would'st weary heaven with prayer, 
Look on thy earthly victims — and despair ! 
Down to the dust ! and as thou rott'st away, 
Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay." 

— A Sketch. 

" Oh factious viper ! whose envenomed tooth 
Would mangle still the dead, perverting truth ; 
What though our ' nation's foes ' lament the fate, 
With generous feeling, of the good and great : 
Shall dastard tongues essay to blast the name 
Of him whose meed exists in endless fame ? " 

— On the Death of Mr. Fox* 

" There Clarke, still striving piteously ' to please,' 
Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees, 
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, 
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, 
Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, 
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine, 
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind ; 
Himself a living libel on mankind." 

— English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 

5. Harsh Contrast — Abruptness. — " Pictures of 
beauty are painted with hues that are words, and speak to us 
of heaven, only to be daubed with an impatient dash of the 
same pencil that wrought their exceeding loveliness ; majestic 
edifices are erected only to be overthrown ; statues full of life 
and feeling are created only to be dashed petulantly to pieces. 
Indeed, Byron experienced great delight in producing those 
brisk shocks of surprise which come from yoking together the 
mean and the exalted, the coarse and the tender. Some of 
these do little credit to his heart, and, in fact, cast ominous 
conjecture on the truthfulness of his feeling. . . . The 
gloom of his meditation is laced with light in all directions. 
Touches of pathos, tributes of affection . . . gleams of 



398 BYRON 

beauty — these all appear in company with a cynicism which 
sneers at the object to which they appeal or a despair which 
doubts their existence." — E. P. Whipple. 

" But the author of it [' Don Juan '] has the unlucky gift 
of personating all those lofty and sweet allusions, and that with 
such grace and truth to nature that it is impossible not to sup- 
pose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their 
votaries — till he casts off the character with a jerk, and the 
moment after he has exalted us to the very height of our con- 
ception, resumes his mocking at all things serious or sublime, 
and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted 
sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality. . . . Thus, 
in this manner, the sublime and terrific description of the 
Shipwreck is strangely and disgustingly broken by traits of low 
humor and buffoonery. . . . Thus all good feelings are 
excited only to accustom us to their speedy and complete ex- 
termination." — Fraficis Jeffrey. 

11 At the most touching moment of Haidee's love, he vents 
a buffoonery. He concludes an ode with caricatures. He is 
Faust in the first verse and Mephistopheles in the second. He 
employs in the midst of tenderness or of murder penny-print 
witticisms, trivialities, gossip, with a pamphleteer's vilifica- 
tion and a buffoon's whimsicalities. He lays bare poetic 
method, asks himself where he has got to, counts the stanzas 
already done, jokes the Muse, Pegasus, and the whole epic 
stud as though he wouldn't give a two-pence for them." — 
Taine. 

" He is by turns a cenobite and an epicure, chaste and vol- 
uptuous, sceptical and believing, a criminal and an apostle, an 
enemy of humanity and a philanthropist, an angel and a de- 
mon." — Emilio Castelar. 

" His parody on the speech from Medea on the summit of 
the Cyneans is a strong proof of the strange mixture of the 
sublime and the ridiculous in his mind. . . . Vivacity, 
gloom, tenderness, sarcasm, succeed each other too rapidly for 



BYRON 399 

the current of ordinary feeling to follow them. We wonder 
without sympathizing ; the very power of the artist leads us 
to doubt the sincerity of the man." — Thomas Moore. 

" Its [' Don Juan's'] power is owing to the force of the seri- 
ous writing and the contrast between that and the flashy pas- 
sages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the 
ridiculous there is but one step. ... A classical intoxi- 
cation is followed by the splashing of soda-water, by frothy 
effusions of ordinary bile." — William Hazlitt. 

" In him the sublime and the ridiculous, the noble and the 
mean, the sarcastic and the tender, the voluptuous and the 
beautifully spiritual, the pious and the impious were all em- 
bodied. . . . He was a many-sided monster showing 
now sublime and now grotesque." — W. M. Howitt. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And thus like to an angel o'er the dying 

Who die in righteousness, she leaned ; and there 

All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying, 

As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air. 

But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying ; 

Since, after all, no doubt the youthful pair 

Must breakfast, and betimes — lest they should ask it, 

She drew out her provision from the basket." 

— Don Juan. 

" As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate 
Ne'er to be entered more by him or Sin, 
With such a glance of supernatural hate 
As made Saint Peter wish himself within ; 
He pattered with his keys at a great rate, 
And sweated through his apostolic skin : 
Of course, his perspiration was but ichor, 
Or some such other spiritual liquor." 

— Vision of Judgment. 



400 BYRON 

" He felt that chilling heaviness of heart, 
Or rather stomach, which, alas ! attends, 
Beyond the best apothecary's art, 
The loss of love, the treachery of friends, 
Or death for those we dote on, when a part 
Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends ; 
No doubt he would have been much more pathetic 
But the sea acted as a strong emetic." — Don Juan. 

6. Grandeur — Magnificence. — " His work, beyond all 
our other poets, recalls or suggests the wide and high things 
in nature ; the large likeness of the elements, the immeas- 
urable liberty and the stormy strength of the waters and 
winds. . . . To him the large motions and the beauties 
of space were tangible and familiar as flowers." — A. C. 
Swinburne. 

" The fierce and far delight of the thunderstorm is here [in 
' Childe Harold '] described in verse almost as vivid as its 
lightnings. The live thunder leaping among the rattling crags 
— the voice of mountains, as if shouting to each other — the 
plashing of the big rain — the gleaming of the wide lake, 
lighted like phosphoric sea — present a picture of sublime terror, 
yet of enjoyment, often attempted but never so well, certainly 
never better, brought out in poetry. ... In the very 
grand and tremendous drama of ' Cain/ Lord Byron has 
certainly matched Milton on his own ground." — Sir Walter 
Scott. 

"[' Of Childe Harold '] Declamation unfolds itself, pompous 
and at times artificial, but potent and so often sublime that the 
rhetorical dotings which he yet preserved disappear under the 
afflux of splendor with which it is loaded. Wordsworth, Wal- 
ter Scott, by the side of this prodigality of accumulated splen- 
dors, seemed poor and gloomy." — Taine. 

" Never did the eternal spirit of the chainless mind make 
a brighter apparition amongst us. He seems at times a trans- 
formation of that immortal Prometheus, of whom he has written 



BYRON 40I 

so nobly, . . . whose grand and mysterious form, trans- 
figured by time, reappears from age to age ... to wail 
forth the lament of genius, tortured by the presentiment of 
things it will not see realized in its time." — Mazzini. 

" His enjoyment of nature in her grander aspects and the 
consolation he received from her amid the solitudes of the sea 
and lake and mountain, are expressed with sublimity in the 
passages upon the ocean and the June thunderstorm." — -John 
Addington Symonds. 

" The sublime disorder of Byron's genius is like the grand 
confusion of nature. . . . We must ascend to Jeremiah 
to meet in universal literature a poet who, like him, could 
send his voice from the tombs, repeat like him the elegy of 
rain. He raised himself at one flight to the most sublime re- 
gions of the spirit, in which all appeared to him expanded and 
glori fied . ' ' — Emilio Castelar. 

" His soul was exalted by the broad and mighty aspects of 
nature : for mosaic he was unfitted : a mountain, the sea, 
a thunder-storm, a glorious woman, such imposing objects 
aroused his noble rage." — E. C. Stedman. 

"Its [Manfred's] obscurity is a part of its grandeur — and 
the darkness that rests upon it and the smoky distance in 
which it is lost are all devices to increase its majesty, to 
stimulate our curiosity and impress us with a deeper awe." 
— Francis Jeffrey. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Most glorious orb ! that wert a worship ere 
The mystery of thy making was revealed ! 
Thou earliest minister of the Almighty, 
Which gladdened, on their mountain tops, the hearts 
Of the Chaldean shepherds, till they poured 
Themselves in orisons ! Thou material God ! 
And representative of the Unknown — 
Who chose thee for His shadow ! 
26 



402 BYRON 

Thou chief star ! Centre of many stars ! which mak'st our earth 

Endurable, and temperest the hues 

And hearts of all who walk within thy rays ! 

Sire of the seasons ! Monarch of the climes, 

And those who dwell in them ! for near or far, 

Our inborn spirits have a tint of thee 

Even as our outward aspects ; thou dost rise 

And shine and set in glory. Fare the well ! " — Manfred. 

" Oh, thou beautiful 

And unimaginable ether ! and 

Ye multiplying masses of increased 

And still increasing lights ! What are ye ? What 

Is this blue wilderness of interminable 

Air, where ye roll along as I have seen 

The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden ? 

Is your course measured for ye ? Or do ye 

Sweep on in your unbounded revelry 

Through an aerial universe of endless 

Expansion — at which my soul aches to think — 

Intoxicated with Eternity? " — Cain. 

11 Ye wilds, that look eternal ; and thou cave, 
Which seem'st unfathomable ; and ye mountains, 
So varied and so terrible in beauty ; 
Here, in your rugged majesty of rocks 
And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone 
In perpendicular places, where the foot 
Of man would tremble, could he reach them — yes, 
Ye look eternal ! " — Heaven and Earth. 

i 
7. Depravity — Profligacy. — "The admirers of his 

poetry appear sensible of some obligation to be the champions 
of his conduct, while those who have diligently gathered to- 
gether the details of an accurate knowledge of the unseemli- 
ness of his conduct, cannot bear to think that from this bramble 
men have been able to gather figs." — John Morley. 

"The recklessness with which he indulged in libertinism 



BYRON 403 

was equalled only by the coolness with which he referred to it. 
In a letter to Hodgson in 18 10, he makes the candid confes- 
sion that he has found ' that nothing but virtue will do in this 

d d world. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have 

tried in all its disagreeable varieties, and mean, on my return, 
to cut all my dissolute acquaintances and leave off wine and 
carnal company and betake myself to politics and decorum.' 
On his return to England he changed this amiable determina- 
tion, so far as decorum was concerned, though he paid some 
little attention to politics. He seemed determined to drain 
the wine of life to the dregs and to excel in all the pleasant 
methods of disposing of health, peace, and happiness which a 
great metropolis affords. . . . He appeared determined 
to be excelled by none either in literature or licentiousness. 
He labors to make vice splendid. There are pas- 
sages in his works which are not merely licentious in tendency 
but openly obscene. . . . Some portions of his works, 
for ribaldry and impurity, fairly bear off the palm from all 
other dabblers in dirt and blasphemy. A person unacquainted 
with the character of Byron would infer from these bold and 
bad portions of his poems and letters that his soul was the seat 
of obdurate malice. They seem to illustrate what Dr. Johnson 
calls ' the frigid villany of studious lewdness, the calm malig- 
nity of labored impurity.' They have none of that soft and 
graceful voluptuousness with which poets usually gild and hu- 
manize sensuality, and of which Byron himself was, when he 
pleased, so consummate a master. The faults of his life blaze 
out in his own verse and glitter on almost every page of his 
correspondence. . . . He gradually lost all moral, fear. 
Everything sacred in life, religion, affection, sentiment, duty, 
virtue, he could as easily consider matter for mirth as for seri- 
ous meditation. . . . His genius fed on poisons, and 
they became nutriment to it. Byron casts the dra- 

pery of the beautiful over things intrinsically mean and bad, 
and renders them poetical to the eye. . . . If he took 



404 BYRON 

pleasure in idealizing the bad, he received no less in degrad- 
ing the ideal. " — E. P. Whipple. 

"He plunged into wild and desperate excesses, ennobled 
by no generous and tender sentiment. From his Venetian 
harem he sent forth volume after volume full of eloquence, 
of wit, of pathos, of ribaldry, and of bitter disdain." — 
Macaulay. 

" Byron's cry is, 'I am miserable because law exists; and I 
have broken it, broken it so habitually that now I cannot 
help breaking it. I have tried to eradicate the sense of it by 
speculation, by action ; but I cannot.' The tree of knowl- 
edge is not the tree of life. . . . That law exists let it 
never be forgotten, is the real meaning of Byron, down in 
that last terrible ' Don Juan,' in which he sits himself down 
in artificial calm, to trace the gradual rotting and degradation 
of a man without law, the slave of his own pleasures." — 
Charles Kingsley. 

" There is the varnish of voluptuousness on the surface of all 
he touches. He, if ever man was, is a law unto himself — a 
chartered libertine. . . . Their [his poems] general ten- 
dency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious. 
We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, 
seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which 
are extremely reprehensible. . . . Under some strange 
misapprehension as to the truth and the duty of proclaiming 
it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to con- 
vince his readers, both directly and indirectly, that all enno- 
bling pursuits and disinterested virtues are mere deceits or 
illusions — hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, 
and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, 
valor, devotion, constancy — all are to be laughed at, disbe- 
lieved in, and despised ! — and nothing is really good, so far 
as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood 
and of banquets and intrigues to sooth it again ! 
The charge we bring against Lord Byron, in short, is, that 



BRYON 405 

his writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality 
of virtue — and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affec- 
tion ridiculous, and this by the constant exhibition of the 
most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been 
transiently represented by the purest and most exalted emo- 
tion. " — Francis Jeffrey . 

"Southey, the poet laureate, said of him that he savored 
of Moloch and Belial — most of all Satan. . . . Several 
times in Italy Lord Byron saw gentlemen leave a drawing- 
room with their wives when he was announced. ... It 
is here [in < Don Juan '] the diabolical poet digs in his sharpest 
claw, and he takes care to dig it into your weakest side. 
You see clearly that he is always the same, in excess 
and unhappy, bent on destroying himself. His ' Don Juan ' 
is also a debauchery ; in it he diverts himself outrageously at 
the expense of all respectable things, as a bull in a china-shop. 
He is often violent and often ferocious ; black imagination 
brings into his stories horrors leisurely enjoyed. . . . Too 
vigorous and hence unbridled — that is the word which ever 
recurs when we speak of Byron. . . . When a man jests 
amidst his tears it is because he has a personal imagination." 
— Taine. 

"Whenever he wrote a bad poem he supported his fame 
by a signal act of profligacy ; an elegy by a seduction, a 
heroic by an adultery, a tragedy, by a divorce." — Walter 
Landor. 

" Byron's nature was in substance not that of the €v<f>vr)<; at 
all but rather of the barbarian." — Tho?nas Arnold. 

" He cannot be called a moral poet. His collected works 
are not of a kind to be recommended for family reading ; and 
the poems in which his genius shines most clearly are precisely 
those which lie open to the charge of licentiousness." — John 
Addington Symonds. 

" ' Childe Harold' is, I think, a very clever poem, but 
gives no true symptoms of the writer's heart or morals. 



406 BYRON 

Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it must 
require impudence almost equal to the noble lord's other 
powers to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from 
his being tired of his assailers and his paramours." — Sir Wal- 
ter Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Fill the goblet again ! for I never before 

Felt the glow which now gladdens my heart to its core ; 

Let us drink ! Who would not ? since, through life's varied 

round, 
In the goblet alone no deception is found. 
I have tried, in its turn, all that life can supply ; 
I have basked in the beam of a dark rolling eye ; 
I have lov'd !—who has not ? but what heart can declare 
That pleasure existed while passion was there ? 

Long life to the grape ! for when summer is flown, 
The age of our nectar shall gladden our own ; 
We must die — who shall not ? May our sins be forgiven. 
And Hebe shall never be idle in Heaven." 

— Fill the Goblet Again. 

" Thus in the East they are extremely strict, 
And wedlock and a padlock mean the same ;. 
Excepting only when the former's picked 
It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame ; 
Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when pricked : 
But then their own polygamy's to blame ; 
Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life 
Into that moral centaur, man and wife ? " 

— Don Juan. 

" Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush 
Might once have been mistaken for a blush. 
From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, 
That spot where hearts were once supposed to be ; 



BYRON 407 

Round all the confines of the yielded waist 

The strangest hand may wander undisplaced ; 

The lady's in return may grasp as much 

As princely paunches offer to her touch. 

Pleased, round the chalky floor how well they trip, 

One hand reposing on the royal hip ; 

The other to the shoulder no less royal 

Ascending with affection truly loyal ! " — The Waltz. 

8. Thoughtful Beauty. — "He never lost a keen per- 
ception of the pure and beautiful. . . . The passages of 
thoughtful beauty which are scattered over his stormy and im- 
pulsive poems — following, as they so often do, fierce bursts of 
passion and the bad idolatry of hatred and despair — are as 
pleasing to the eye as starlight after lightning. In the third 
and fourth cantos of ' Childe Harold,' in ' Don Juan,' in the 
narratives and meditations which he has cast in a dramatic 
form, passages might be selected of most witching l®veliness, 
of deep pathos, of sad and mournful beauty of sentiment, of 
adspiration after truth and goodness — of pity and charity and 
faith and humanity and love." — E. P. Whipple. 

11 Never has the genius of man inspired pages more beauti- 
ful than those in which Lord Byron describes his travels in 
Greece." — Emilio Castelar. 

" His poems abound with sentiments of great dignity 
and tenderness as well as passages of infinite sublimity and 
beauty." — Francis Jeffrey. 

" ' Childe Harold ' is one woven mass of beauty and in- 
tellectual gold from end to end." — W. M. Howitt. 

" The beauty of ' Cain ' is such as we shall not see a sec- 
ond time in the world." — Goethe. 

"Along with his astounding power and passion he had a 
strong and deep sense for what was beautiful in nature and for 
what was beautiful in human action and suffering." — Matthew 
Arnold. 

" There was a strain in his poetry in which the sense pre- 



408 BYRON 

dominated over the sound ; there was the eye keen to behold 
nature and the pen powerful to trace her varied graces of 
beauty or terror." — Sir Walter Scott. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Ye stars ! which are the poetry of heaven, 
If in your bright leaves we would read the fnte 
Of men and empires — 'tis to be forgiven, 
That in our aspirations to be great 
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, 
And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are 
A beauty and a mystery, and create 
In us such love and reverence from afar 
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named 
Themselves a star." — Childe Harold. 

" Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, 
Along Morea's hills the setting sun ; 
Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright, 
But one unclouded blaze of living light ! 
O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, 
Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows." 

— The Corsair. 

" The winds were pillowed on the waves ; 
The banners drooped along their staves, 
And, as they fell around them furling, 
Above them shone the crescent curling ; 
And that deep silence was unbroke, 
Save where the watch his signal spoke, 
Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill, 
And echo answered from the hill, 
And the wide hum of that wild host 
Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, 
As rose the Muezzin's voice in air 
In midnight call to wonted prayer." 

— The Siege of Corinth. 

9. Lofty Eloquence. — "In his 'Childe Harold' he 
assumes a lofty and philosophic tone, and * reasons high of 



BYRON 409 

Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate.' . . . Lord 
Byron has strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds 
of our classical and time-hallowed recollections and to re- 
kindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after greatness and 
true glory with a pen of fire." — William Hazlitt. 

" Filled with all these [Nature's] images of nobility and 
greatness, he gave them back to his page with a tone so philo- 
sophically profound, with a music so thrilling, with a dignity 
so graceful and yet so tender, that nothing in poetry can be 
conceived more fascinating and perfect." — W. M. Howitt. 

" The matter with which he deals is gigantic, and he paints 
with violent colors and sweeping pencil." — John Morley. 

" Feeling the un worthiness of his subject, he dazzles and 
blinds the eye with a blaze of words." — E. P. Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Yet, Italy ! through every other land 

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side ; 
Mother of Arts ! as once of arms ; thy hand 

Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ; 
Parent of our Religion ! whom the wide 

Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven ! 
Europe, repentant of her parricide, 

Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, 

Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven." 

— Child e Harold. 

" Spirit of freedom ! when on Phyle's brow 

Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, 
Could'st thou forebode the dismal hour which now 

Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain ? 
Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, 

But every carle can lord it o'er thy land ; 
Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, 

Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, 

From birth till death enslaved ; in word, in deed unmann'd." 

— Child e Harold. 



4lO BYRON 

" Clime of the unforgotten brave ! 

Whose land, from plain to mountain cave, 

Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave ! 

Shrine of the mighty ! can it be 

That this is all remains of thee ? 

Approach, thou craven crouching slave ; 

Say, is not this Thermopylae ? 

Those waters blue that round you lave, 

Oh servile offspring Of the free — 

Pronounce what sea, what shore is this ? 

The gulf, the rock of Salamis ! 

These scenes, their story not unknown, 

Arise, and make again your own." — The Giaour. 



Coleridge, 1772-1834 

Biographical Outline. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born 
October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary; father vicar of the 
town and master of the public grammar school, a man of un- 
usual learning ; Coleridge is the youngest ©f ten children ; he 
is remarkably precocious and imaginative as a child, and says 
of himself later, " I never thought as a child and never used 
the language of a child ; " he reads the " Arabian Nights " 
before he is five, and, on the death of his father, in 1781, ob- 
tains, through Sir Francis Buller, a presentation to Christ's 
Hospital, a school that he enters in July, 1782 ; here he 
forms an intimate friendship with Charles Lamb, which lasts 
during Lamb's lifetime ; afterward, in his " Essays of Elia," 
Lamb writes of Coleridge as " the inspired charity boy," who 
expounded Plotinus, recited Homer in the Greek, and read 
Virgil for pleasure ; before his fifteenth year Coleridge trans- 
lates eight Greek hymns into English Anacreontics ; on re- 
ceiving, by accident, a subscription to a loan library, he 
"skulks out" of school and reads "right through the cata- 
logue; " at first he proposes to become a physician, aids his 
brother in hospital operations, and memorizes a whole Latin 
medical dictionary ; before his fifteenth year he exchanges 
medicine for metaphysics; Voltaire "seduces him into infi- 
delity, out of which he was flogged by the head-master of 
Christ's Hospital " — a chastisement that Coleridge afterward 
called "the only just flogging I ever received;" he is re- 
called from metaphysics to poetry by falling in love with the 
sister of a school-mate and by reading the sonnets of Bowles, 
which he repeatedly transcribes as presents to his friends ; 
while at Christ's Hospital he impairs his health by imprudent 

411 



412 COLERIDGE 

exposure and improper and scanty food, but, in spite of spend- 
ing many months in the sick-ward, he rises to the head of the 
school, which he leaves in September, 1790. 

Having been appointed to an exhibition worth ^40 a 
year at Jesus College, Cambridge, Coleridge begins residence 
there as a sizar in October, 1791, and becomes a pensioner in 
the following November ; in 1792 he wins a medal offered for 
the best Greek ode ; as he is prevented from competing for 
the highest honors of the university by his ignorance of math- 
ematics, his reading becomes desultory, and he grows fond of 
society, in which he shines as a conversationalist ; during 
1793 he loses the favor of the college authorities through his 
liberal political views, and becomes depressed by debt ; late 
in 1793 he runs away from Cambridge and reaches London, 
where he sells a poem to the Morni?ig Chronicle for a guinea ; 
soon afterward he publishes in the Chronicle a series of " Son- 
nets on Eminent Characters; " then he enlists in the dra- 
goons under the name of Comberback, and is sent to Reading 
to be drilled with his regiment ; here he fails as a horseman, 
but wins the favor of his comrades by writing their letters and 
nursing them in the hospital ; an accident leads to his recog- 
nition and discharge from the army in April, 1794 ; he writes 
a penitent letter to his brothers, and through their aid he re- 
turns, April 12, 1794, to Cambridge, where he is admonished 
in the presence of the fellows; in June, 1794, while visiting 
a friend at Oxford, he meets Southey ; soon afterward he 
makes a pedestrian tour through North Wales, where he meets 
his sweetheart, Mary Evans, at Wrexham ; this tour is after- 
ward described by Coleridge and his companion in a small 
volume ; returning by way of Bristol, he again meets Southey 
there, and on short acquaintance he becomes engaged to Sara 
Fricker, daughter of a Bristol tradesman, to whose sister 
Southey was already engaged ; while at Bristol Coleridge joins 
with Southey and others in developing a socialistic scheme 
called by them " Pantisocracy ; " they were to marry, emi- 



COLERIDGE 413 

grate to the banks of the Susquehanna, and establish there a 
modern Utopia ; about this time Coleridge collaborates with 
Southey in writing " The Fall of Robespierre," which was 
published as the work of Coleridge in 1794. 

Coleridge leaves Cambridge without a degree late in 1794, 
and first visits London, where he renews his association with 
Lamb ; Southey recalls him to his fiancee at Bristol, where 
Coleridge meets Joseph Cottle, a young bookseller, who lends 
him money to pay for his lodgings and those of the other 
" Pantisocratians " at 48 College Street; Cottle also offers 
Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems ; during the 
following six months Coleridge increases his income some- 
what by giving at least eighteen public lectures, mainly on 
political subjects ; although the volume of poems is not com- 
pleted, Cottle offers him one and one-half guineas for every 
hundred lines written after the completion of the volume ; 
with this assurance of support, the poet promptly marries 
SaraFricker, on October 4, 1795, ten days before the marriage 
of her sister to Southey ; the Coleridges settle at once at a 
small one-story cottage at Clevedon, and Southey leaves his 
bride for a voyage to Portugal, whence he writes to Coleridge 
that the scheme of " Pantisocracy " must be abandoned. 

Coleridge's first volume of poems, including three sonnets 
by Lamb, is published by Cottle at Bristol in April, 1796 ; 
he now proposes to establish a new journal, and makes a tour 
of Northern England in search of subscribers ; he secures over 
a thousand subscribers, establishes The Watchman, an eight- 
day paper, issues just five editions, and then abandons the 
venture on the ground that it does not pay expenses ; mean- 
time Coleridge has become an occasional preacher at Unitarian 
chapels, and considers seriously the idea of becoming a regu- 
lar minister of that sect ; while at Birmingham, during his 
tour in search for subscribers, he had met a young banker, 
Charles Lloyd, who was so fascinated by Coleridge's conver- 
sation that he gave up his business, and soon afterward came 



414 COLERIDGE 

to Bristol to live with the poet and to contribute largely to his 
support; in the winter of 1796-97 Coleridge and Lloyd re- 
move to a small house at Nether Stowey, near Bridgewater, 
where Coleridge's friend, Thomas Poole, raises a subscription 
sufficient to provide the poet with a small annuity ; a second 
edition of Coleridge's poems, with some by Lloyd and Lamb, 
ap]0ars in 1797 ; Lamb and his sister visit Coleridge at 
Nether Stowey in June, 1797, and soon afterward Wordsworth 
settles at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, in order to be near 
Coleridge ; while at Nether Stowey Coleridge writes "Osorio," 
afterward called "Remorse," and refuses thirty guineas offered 
by Cottle for the drama because Coleridge hopes to have it 
produced on the stage, but Sheridan ignores it ; during 1797 
and 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborate in writing 
the " Lyrical Ballads," which are published in September, 
1798 ; Coleridge's principal contribution to the volume was 
"The Ancient Mariner," to which Wordsworth contributed 
a few lines ; during 1797 Coleridge also writes the first parts 
of " Christabel " and " Kubla Khan," although these poems 
were not published till eighteen years afterward ; the volume 
" Lyrical Ballads" was a financial failure, and when Cottle 
sold out to the Longmans, a little later, the copyright was 
listed as having no value ; Lloyd leaves Coleridge during 
1798, and the poet renews, for a time, his former practice of 
preaching in Unitarian pulpits ; about this time his friend 
Josiah Wedgwood offers Coleridge an annuity of ^150 on 
condition that he will decline a proffered pastorship at Shrews- 
bury and devote himself henceforth to philosophy ; after some 
hesitation Coleridge accepts the offer, and thereupon severs his 
connection with the Unitarian body. 

In September, 1798, he starts for Germany with Words- 
worth and Wordsworth's sister, Coleridge's expenses being 
borne by Wedgwood ; the poets visit Klopstock at Ham- 
burg, and when the Wordsworths go to Goslar, Coleridge set- 
tles at Ratzeburg, where he studies German diligently with a 



COLERIDGE 415 

Protestant pastor ; in January, 1799, ne goes to the University 
of Gottingen, where he " indulges freely in his perennial pas- 
time of disquisition ; " in May, 1799, he makes a walking 
tour through the Hartz Mountains and writes " Lines on 
Ascending the Brocken ; " he returns to England in June, 
1799, v i s i ts Nether Stowey and the Lake country, and then 
shuts himself up in London for six weeks while he makes his 
masterly translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein," which is pub- 
lished in 1800 ; Coleridge had already contributed occasion- 
ally to the Morning Chronicle, and late in 1799, on the 
recommendation of Mackintosh, he is engaged at a guinea a 
week as a regular writer for the then newly established Morn- 
i?ig Post ; his most successful contribution to the Post is " The 
Devil's Thoughts," of which a part was written by Southey ; 
Coleridge afterward declared that he had declined an offer 
of a half interest in the Post and in the Courier, together 
worth ^2,000 a year, saying to the owner, " I would not 
give up the country and the lazy reading of old books for two 
thousand times ^2,000 ; in short, beyond ^350 a year I con- 
sider money a real evil ; " but this statement was perhaps one 
of the exaggerations due to the poet's indulgence in opium. 

In July, 1800, Coleridge removes, with his family, to Greta 
Hall, Keswick, where Southey occupies another part of the 
same house from 1803 to 1809 ; at Keswick, in 1800, he 
writes the second part of " Christabel " and in 1802 his 
" Ode to Dejection," in which he bemoans the decline of 
his imaginative powers; as early as 1796 he had begun to 
resort to laudanum for relief from rheumatic and neuralgic 
pains, and he had written the first part of " Kubla Khan " 
under the influence of the drug ; in 1800 he writes of taking 
opium for "the pleasurable sensations," and by 1803 he has 
become a confirmed opium-eater ; for several years prior to 
1 8 14 he takes regularly two quarts of laudanum a week, and 
during one week he records taking a quart in twenty-four 
hours; because of the influence of the drug his statements 



4l6 COLERIDGE 

about himself at this period are quite untrustworthy ; his nat- 
ural lack of business ability is intensified, he becomes gradu- 
ally estranged from his wife, and he leaves his family to be 
provided for by Southey ; he visits Wales with Thomas Wedg- 
wood in 1802 and Scotland with the Wordsworths in 1803. 

In April, 1804, having received a loan of jQioo from 
Wordsworth and another ^100 from his brothers, he sails for 
Malta, and there acts, for several months, as secretary to the 
governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball ; he leaves Malta 
in September, 1805, visits Sicily and Naples, spends some 
months in Rome, and then leaves suddenly for England on 
being informed by the Prussian minister that Napoleon has 
• ' marked ' ' him because of certain articles previously pub- 
lished by Coleridge and reflecting on the French emperor ; 
Coleridge's vessel is said to have been pursued by a French 
frigate, and he is said to have thrown overboard his papers, 
including data gathered during his studies in Rome ; he 
reaches England in August, 1806, "ill, penniless, and worse 
than homeless; " he visits Wordsworth and other friends, and 
first meets De Quincey at Bridgewater in 1807 ; De Quincey 
makes him a gift of ^300 ; Coleridge is given a lodging at 
the Courier office in London, and, in the spring of 1808, he 
earns ^100 by lecturing at the Royal Institution ; later in 
the same year he settles at Grasmere as a member of Words- 
worth's family, and establishes The Friend, a journal that 
exists till March, 18 10 ; then for a time Coleridge lives with 
Basil Montagu in London ; then he lodges with his old friend 
John Morgan, of Bristol, most of the time till 18 16, though 
he seems to have been a kind of literary tramp during this 
period ; his lectures on Shakespeare in 1810-11 excited much 
interest, and were attended by such writers as Byron and 
Rogers; from 181 2 to 18 18 he contributes occasionally to 
the Courier ; his neglect of literary endeavor because of 
opium-eating becomes finally so complete that his pension 
from the Wedgwoods is withdrawn; in 1824 he becomes one 



COLERIDGE 417 

often " royal associates," who receive from George IV. a 
pension of jQ 100 each till the death of that monarch; De 
Quincey and other friends contribute to Coleridge's support, 
and Byron induces the Drury Lane committee to produce 
" Remorse," which has a run of twenty nights, and brings a 
good financial return to Coleridge; from 1813 to 1816 he 
is so completely under the influence of opium as to lose the 
respect of most of his friends, although he completes his 
" Biographia Literaria " by 181 5. 

In April, 181 5, Coleridge is received, on the appeal of his 
physician, as a guest in the home of Mr. Gilman, of High- 
gate, near London, and here he remains, with slight excep- 
tions, till his death, meanwhile making a heroic and partially 
successful endeavor to discard the use of opium ; at Byron's 
request for a tragedy Coleridge writes "Zapolya," which is 
rejected by the theatres, but is published by Murray in 181 7 
as a " Christmas Tale;" meantime, in 1816, Murray has 
published " Christabel " with " Kubla Khan " and " The 
Pains of Sleep ; " three editions of this volume were sold in a 
year; in 1816 and 181 7 are published two of Coleridge's 
"Lay Sermons," and in 181 7 a collection of his poems 
called " Sibylline Leaves " and the " Biographia Literaria ; " 
Coleridge gives his last series of public lectures in London in 
the winter of 1818-19 to " crowded and sympathetic audi- 
ences ; " in 1820 appears his " Essay on Church and State," 
and in 1825 his " Aids to Reflection; " meantime he has 
become famous, and during his later years he is visited by 
many young writers, including Emerson, and is regarded as 
almost an oracle; most of the time after 1822 he is confined 
to his room and his bed, but in 1828 he travels up the Rhine 
with the Wordsworths, and in 1833 he visits Cambridge; he 
dies at Highgate, London, July 25, 1834. 

27 



4l8 COLERIDGE 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON COLERIDGE. 

Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 

Co., 10-16. 
Carlyle, Thomas, " Life of John Sterling." London, 1852, Chapman & 

Hall, 69-80. 
De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, 2: 138-225. 
Stephen, L., " Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Smith, Elder 

& Co., 339-368. 
Hazlitt, Wm., " The Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, Bell, 43-48. 
Traill, H. D., "English Men of Letters." New York, 1889, Macmil- 

lan, v. index. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 

Fields, 299-334. 
Shairp, J. S. C, " Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." Boston, 1889, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 133-203. 
Pater, W., "Appreciations." London, 1890, Macmillan, 65-106. 
Stedmam E. C, "The Nature of Poetry." Boston, 1893, Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co., 147-185. 
Swinburne, A. C, "Essays and Studies." London, 1875, Chatto & 

Windus, 259-275. 
Lowell, J. R., " Democracy and Other Addresses." Boston, 1887, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 91-103. 
Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets.'' London, 1878, Moxen, 

237-255. 
Bayne, P., " Essays in Biography and Criticism." Boston, 1858, Gould 

& Lincoln, 108-148. 
Child, F. J., " British Poets." Boston, n. d., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

v. index. 
Caine, H., " Coleridge " (Great Writer Series). London, 1887, Walter 

Scott, v. index. 
Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 

88-126. 
Gilfillan, G., "Third Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1854, 

James Hogg, 215-226. 
Oliphant, Mrs.*, "The Literary History of England," etc. London, 

1889, Macmillan, 1 : 243-283. 
Cottle, ]., " Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge." London, 1848, Houl- 

ston & Stonman, v. index. 
Gillman, " Life of S. T. Coleridge." London, 1838, Pickering, v. index. 
Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 

Scribner, 2 : 57-109. 



COLERIDGE 419 

Allsop, T., " Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Cole- 
ridge." London, 1858, Groombridge, v. index. 

Brandt, A., "Coleridge and the Romantic School." London, 1887, 
Murray, v. index. 

Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., 188-209. 

Foster, J., "Critical Essays." London, 1877, Bell, 2: 1-24. 

Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Pater). London, 1881, Macmillan, 
102-114. 

Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." London, 1874, H. 
S. King, 69-93. 

Chorley, H. T., "Authors of England." London, 1888, C. Tilt, 

37-43- 

Mitford, M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 185 1, 
Harper, 386-398. 

Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 
London, 1885, Murray, 159-197. 

Martineau, J., "Essays, Philosophical and Theological." Boston, 1866, 
W. N. Spencer, 329-406. 

Wilson, Prof. J., " Noctes Ambrosiana." Edinburgh, 1856, Black- 
wood, vols. 1 and 2, v. index. 

Atlantic Monthly, 45 : 483-498 (G. P. Lathrop). 

Bibliotheca Sacra, 4: 117-171 (Noah Porter). 

Blackwood's Magazine, 57: 1 17-132 (De Quincey). 

Contemporary Review, 67 : 876-887 (Andrew Lang) ; 67 : 548-569 (J. 
Wedgwood). 

Critic, 6 : 249-250 (J. R. Lowell). 

Edinburgh Review, 28: 488-515 (W. Hazlitt). 

Fortnightly Review, 43 : 1 1-25 (J. Tulloch) ; 52 : 342-366 (E. Dowden). 

North American Review, 40: 299-351 (G. B. Cheever). 

National Review, 5 : 504-518 (J. Martineau). 

Westminster Review, 33: 257-302 (J. S. Mill). 

National Review, 25 : 318-327 (L. Stephen). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Miltonic Eloquence — Sublimity. — "A sublime 
man who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of 
spiritual manhood, escaping from the black materialisms and 
revolutionary deluges with < God, freedom, and immortality ' 
still his ; a king of men." — Carlyle. 



420 COLERIDGE 

" The majestic rush and roar of that irregular anapaestic 
measure, used once or twice by this supreme master of them 
all, no student can follow without an exultation of enjoyment. 
The ' Hymn to the Earth ' has a sonorous and oceanic 
strength of harmony, a grace and glory of life, that fill the 
sense with a vigorous delight." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" His genius at that time [1798] had angelic wings and fed 
on manna. . . . His thoughts did not seem to come 
with labor and effort but as if borne on the gusts of genius 
and as if the wings of imagination lifted him from off his 
feet. . . . His voice rolled on the ear like the pealing 
organ, and its song alone was the music of thought. His 
mind was clothed with wings, and, raised on them, he lifted 
philosophy to heaven." — William Hazlitt. 

" He has gone about in the true spirit of an old Greek 
bard, with a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance to 
the divine spirit within him. . . . There is nothing 
more wonderful than the facile majesty of his images or rather 
of his world of imagery, which, whether in his poetry or his 
prose, starts up before us self-raised and all-perfect, like the 
palace of Aladdin. He ascends the sublimest truths by a 
winding track of sparkling glory." — T. N. Talfourd. 

" Nature moved Coleridge to eloquence, rhapsody, and 
worship as an artist to imaginative mysticism." — E. C. 
Stedman. 

" In divine things Coleridge's poetry takes on a Miltonic 
majesty of diction and a Miltonic stateliness of rhyme. It is 
as if some sweet and solemn strain of organ music had suc- 
ceeded to the blast of the war-bugles and the roll of drums." 
— - H. D. Traill. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star 
In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause 
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! 
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base 



COLERIDGE 421 

Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful Form ! 
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, 
How silently ! Around thee and above 
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, 
An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it 
As with a wedge ! But when I look again, 
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, 
Thy habitation from eternity ! 

dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee, 
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 

Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 

1 worshipped the Invisible alone." 

— Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni. 

11 Ye Clouds ! that far above me float and pause, 
Whose pathless march no mortal can control ! 
Ye Ocean-waves ! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, 
Yield homage only to eternal laws ! 
Ye woods ! that listen to the night-bird's singing, 
O ye loud waves ! and O ye Forests high ! 
And O ye clouds that far above me soar'd ! 
Thou rising sun ! thou blue rejoicing sky ! 
Yea, everything that is, and will be free ! 
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, 
With what deep worship I have still adored 
The spirit of divinest liberty." — The Destiny of Nations. 

" O Spirit blest ! 
Whether the Eternal's throne around, 
Amidst the blaze of Seraphim, 
Thou pourest forth the grateful hymn, 
Or soaring through the blest domain 
Enrapturest angels with thy strain, 
Grant me, like thee, the lyre to sound, 
Like thee with fire divine to glow ; 
But ah ! when rage the waves of woe, 
Grant me with firmer breast to meet their hate 
And soar beyond the storm with upright eyes elate ! " 

— On the Death of Chatter ton. 



422 COLERIDGE 

2. Realistic Supernaturalism. — " Coleridge has been 
peculiarly successful in reducing to the fetters of time and 
place certain things in their nature evanescent. There are 
certain moods, lasting but a little while, which cannot be ex- 
plained by any patent mentai philosophy that I am aware of. 
In reading ' Kubla Khan ' we seem rapt into that 
paradise revealed to Swedenborg, where music and color and 
perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the 
harmonies of heaven." — A. C. Swinburne. 

"His theology of nature went through two phases. The 
first, in his world-going period, is very fantastic. There are 
multitudes of spirits, he conceived, belonging to the service of 
God ; some contemplating spirits, who gazed forever on the 
front of Deity; some in whose hands lay the guidance and fate 
of nations, but others who were the forming spirits of creation, 
by whose operation all nature grew and made itself and died and 
was born again. . . . Nature, therefore, in all its myriad 
forms, is ever alive in God. . . . He [Coleridge] changes 
afterward to the idea that it is that of God in us that makes 
nature to us. The existence of the outward world is only phe- 
nomenal, not actual. We have given us the forms of things in 
thought ; and, thinking these, we see, hear, and feel them, and 
build up the world of nature for ourselves." — Stopford Brooke. 

"Wordsworth gives us a series of realistic themes; Cole- 
ridge gives us supernatural incident possessed with the reality 
of human interest. Pater speaks of this characteristic as ' ro- 
mantic weirdness ; the imaginative apprehension of the silent 
and unseen processes of nature.' " — Hall Came. 

" For his poetry, his philosophical criticism, and the tradi- 
tion of his conversation, Coleridge will probably be most 
esteemed by posterity. As a poet, we think that his genius is 
displayed with the most wonderful effect in ' Christabel,' and 
' The Ancient Mariner.' In these the mystical element of 
human nature has its finest poetical embodiment. They act 
upon the mind with a weird-like influence, searching out the 



COLERIDGE 423 

most obscure recesses of the soul and making mysterious emo- 
tions in the very centre of our being and then sending them to 
glide and tingle along every nerve and vein with the effect of 
enchantment. It is as if we were possessed with a subtle insan- 
ity or had stolen a glance into the occult secrets of the universe. 
All our customary impressions of things are shaken by the in- 
trusion of an indefinite sense of fear and amazement into the 
soul. . . . He could likewise stir that supernatural fear 
in the heart which he has so powerfully expressed in one stanza 
of ' The Ancient Mariner' — a fear from which no person, poet 
or prosaist, has ever been entirely free, and which makes the 
blood of the pleasantest atheist at times turn cold and his phi- 
losophy slide away under his feet." — E. P. WJiipple. 

11 He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a 
crystal lake, hid by the mist but glittering in the wave below, 
may conceive the dim, glimmering, uncertain intelligence of 
his eye; he who has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a 
world of vapors) has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, 
unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and ever varying forms." 
— William Hazlitt. 

" In ' Christabel ' the human and the supernatural elements 
interpenetrate each other more completely and more subtly 
than in 'The Ancient Mariner.' The presence of higher than 
mortal powers for evil and for good is everywhere felt, yet 
nowhere is it thrust forward. . . . Although 
we are aware of the ghostly presence of the maiden's mother, 
we never see the phantom. . . . But Coleridge has else- 
where created a visible ghost, a ghost which appears under the 
strangest circumstances, a ghost itself so strange that Coleridge 
may be said to have invented a new spiritual fear. 
Here again in the ' Wanderings of Cain ' loveliness and terror 
are allied . " — Edward Dow den. 

"The world ... in which the strange history of 
' The Ancient Mariner ' was transacted . . . is a world 
in which both animated things and brooks and clouds and 



424 COLERIDGE 

plants are moved by spiritual agency ; in which, as he would 
put it, the veil of the senses is nothing but a symbolism, 
everywhere telling of unseen and supernatural forces. What 
we call the solid and the substantial becomes a dream ; and 
the dream is the true underlying reality." — Leslie Stephen. 

" It is the delicacy, the dreamy grace, in his presentation 
of the marvellous, which makes Coleridge's work so remark- 
able. . . . Coleridge's power is in the very fineness with 
which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our 
inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are. 
1 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ' has the plausibility, the 
perfect adaptation to reason, and the general aspect of life, 
which belong to the marvellous, when actually presented as 
part of a credible experience in our dreams." — Walter Pater. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The western wave was all aflame, 
The day was well-nigh done ! 
Almost upon the western wave 
Rested the broad bright sun ; 
When that strange shape drove suddenly 
Betwixt us and the sun. 

And straight the sun was flecked with bars, 
(Heaven's mother show us grace ! ) 
As if through a dungeon gate he peered 
With broad and burning face. 

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
How fast she nears and nears ! 
Are those her sails that glance in the sun 
Like restless gossameres ? 

Are those her ribs through which the sun 
Did peer, as through a grate ? 
And is that woman all her crew ? 
Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Is Death that woman's mate ? " 

— Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 



COLERIDGE 425 

" The maid, devoid of guile and sin, 
I know not how, in fearful wise 
So deeply had she drunken in 
That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
That all the features were resigned 
To this sole image of her mind ; 
And passively did imitate 
That look of dull and treacherous hate, 
And thus she stood in dizzy trance, 
Still picturing that look askance 
With forced unconscious sympathy 
Full before her father's view." — Christabel. 

" From his obscure haunt 
Shrieked Fear, of Cruelty the ghastly dam, 
Feverous yet freezing, eager-paced yet slow, 
As she that creeps forth from her swampy reeds, 
Ague, the biform hag ! when early Spring 
Beams on the marsh-bred vapours." 

— The Destiny of Nations. 

3. Musical Versification. — " For absolute melody and 
splendor it were hardly rash to call it [' Kubla Khan '] the 
first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to 
a subtle science of verse has made it the supreme model of 
music in our language. . . . Shelley, indeed, comes 
nearest; but for purity and volume of music Shelley is to 
Coleridge as a lark to a nightingale ; his song is heaven — high 
and clear as heaven, but the other's is more rich and weighty, 
more passionately various and warmer in the effusion of 
sound. . . . His ' subtle sway and masterdom ' of music 
could make sweet and strong even the feeble and tuneless form 
of metre called hexameter in English. . . . All the ele- 
ments that compose the perfect form of English metre, as limbs 
and veins and features a beautiful body of man, were more 
familiar, more subject, as it were, to this great poet than to 
any other. How, for instance, no less than rhyme, assonance 
and alliteration are forces, requisite components of high and 



426 COLERIDGE 

ample harmony, witness once for all the divine passage which 
begins — 'Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.' . . . 
Gycine's song flashes out like a visible sunbeam : it is one of 
the brightest bits of music ever done in words." — A. C. Swin- 
burne. 

" Coleridge has taken the old ballad measure and given it, 
by an indefinable charm wholly his own, all the sweetness, all 
the melody and compass of a symphony. . . . The words 
seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the 
choice, variety, and position of the vowel sounds, they be- 
come magical. The most decrepit vocable in the language 
throws away its crutches to dance and sing at his piping." — 
Loivell. 

" In his ' France ' freedom in artistic handling 

is at one with obedience to artistic law. Mr. Theodore Watts 
has called attention to what he describes as its fluid- 
ity of metrical movement. 'The more billowy the metrical 
waves/ he says, ' the better suited they are to render the emo- 
tions expressed by the ode ; ' and he points out how in the 
opening stanza of ' France ' the first metrical wave, after it 
has gently fallen at the end of the first quatrain, leaps up again 
on the double rhymes and goes bounding on, billow after bil- 
low, to the end of the stanza. The mastery of a prolonged 
period in lyrical poetry is rare even with great writers." — 
Edward Dow den. 

" For exquisite music of metrical movement and for im- 
aginative phantasy . . . there is nothing in our lan- 
guage to be compared with ' Christabel ' and ' Kubla Khan ' 
and with the ' Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' " — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"It [' The Ancient Mariner '] has that rich, varied move- 
ment in the verse which gives a distinct idea of the lofty 
or changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice." — William 
Hazlitt. 

" The Coleridge of the imaginative, haunting melody and 



COLERIDGE 427 

sovereign judgment unparalleled in his time." — E. C. Sled- 
man. 

'* The harmony and variety of Coleridge's versification, his 
exquisite delineations of the heart, his command of imagery, 
his ' wide-wandering magnificence of imagination,' have so 
often been the theme of admiring comment that they need not 
be dwelt on here." — E. P. Whipple. 

" The last of these [' Tears in Solitude '] opens and closes 
with some of his best blank verses, full of lambent light and his 
own exquisite music ; the language so simple yet 

so aerially musical, the rhythm so original yet so fitted to the 
story [of ' Christabel ']." — J. C. Shairp. 

li Coleridge is, in fact, the great musician of the romantic 
school of English poetry. His practice is the exact antithesis 
of Wordsworth's theory that there is no essential difference be- 
tween the language of poetry and that of prose. In him met- 
rical movement was all in all. He was the first to depart from 
the lofty iambic movement which had satisfied the feeling of 
the eighteenth century and, by associating picturesque images 
and antique phrases in melodious and pleasing metre, to set 
the imagination free in a world quite removed from actual 
experience." — W. J. Courthope. 

" ' Kubla Khan ' is an ecstasy of sound." — William Ros- 
setti. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The night is chill ; the forest bare ; 
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ? 
There is not wind enough in the air 
To move away the ringlet curl 
From the lovely lady's cheek — 
There is not wind enough to twirl 
The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
That dances as often as dance it can, 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky." 

— Christabel. 



428 COLERIDGE 

" The little cloud — it floats away, 
Away it goes ; away so soon ? 
Alas ! it has no power to stay : 
Its hues are dim, its hues are gray — 
Away it passes from the moon ! 
How mournfully it seems to fly, 
Ever fading more and more, 
To joyless regions of the sky — 
And now 'tis whiter than before ! " — Lewti. 

" A little child, a limber elf, 
Singing, dancing to itself 
A fairy thing with red round cheeks 
That always finds and never seeks 
Makes such a vision to the sight 
As fills a father's eyes with light."— Christabel. 

4. Picturesqueness. — " It is in a highly sensitive ap- 
prehension of the aspects of external nature that Coleridge 
identifies himself most closely with one of the main tendencies 
of the Lake School. ... A characteristic watchfulness 
for the minute fact and expression of natural scenery pervades 
all he writes — a closeness to the exact physiognomy of nat- 
ure. . . . This induces in him no indifference to actual 
color and form and process but such minute realism as this — 

' The thin grey cloud is spread on high, 
It covers but not hides the sky. 
The moon is behind and at the full ; 
And yet she looks both small and dull.' " 

— Walter Pater. 
" And how picturesque it [' The Ancient Mariner '] is in 
the proper sense of the word ! I know nothing like it. There 
is not a description in it. It is all picture. Descriptive poets 
generally confuse us through multiplicity of detail ; we cannot 
see their forest for the trees : but Coleridge never errs in this 
way. With instinctive tact he touches the right chord of as- 
sociation and is satisfied, as we also are." — Lowell. 



COLERIDGE 429 

" If we would find a poetical rendering of the landscape of 
Quantocks, with its unambitious loveliness of coomb and cliff, 

. and again those fine bursts of prospect, 
we must turn to the Nether Stowey poems of Coleridge. 
Assuredly, the writer, . . . who was a travel- 
ler at times through cloudland, and who could create from 
his imagination such visions as those of ' Kubla Khan,' had 
also his foot on English grass and heather, and writing, to use 
Wordsworth's phrase, with his eye upon the object, was able 
to add a page of rare fidelity to the descriptive poetry of our 
country. . . . How exquisite is the description of the 
journeying moon, what magic in the simplest words : 

' The moving moon went up the sky, 
And nowhere did abide ; 
Softly she was going up 
With a star or two beside.' " 

— Edward Dow den. 
" In his descriptions you saw the progress of human happi- 
ness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like 
the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending and de- 
scending and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder." 
— William Hazlitt. 

" Talfourd writes of seeing l the palm-trees wave and the 
pyramids tower in the long perspective of his style ' — . 
the gorgeous suggestiveness of his poetry." — E. P. Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Oh then 'twere loveliest sympathy to mark 
The berries of the half-uprooted ash 
Dripping and bright ; and list the torrents' dash, 
Beneath the cypress or the yew more dark, 
Seated at ease on some smooth, mossy rock ; 

Till high o'erhead his beckoning friend appears. 
And from the forehead of the topmost crag 
Shouts eagerly ; for haply there uprears 



43° COLERIDGE 

That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs 
Which latest shall detain the enamoured sight 
Seen from below, whene'er the valley dims, 
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light ; 
And haply, basoned in some unsunned cleft, 
A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears, 
Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled by the gale." 

— To a Young Friend, 

" A green and silent spot, amid the hills, 
A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place 
No singing sky-lark ever poised himself : 
The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope 
Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, 
All golden with the never-bloomless furze, 
Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell, 
Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate 
As vernal cornfield or the unripe flax, 
When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, 
The level sunshine glimmers with green light." 

— Fears in Solitude. 

11 As when a shepherd on a vernal morn 

Through some thick fog creeps tim'rous with slow foot ; 

Darkling he fixes on th' immediate road 

His downward eye : all else of fairest kind 

Hid or deformed. But lo ! the bursting Sun ! 

Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam, 

Strait the black vapour melteth, and in globes 

Of dewy glitter gems each bank and tree ; 

On every leaf, on every blade it hangs ! 

Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays, 

And wide around the landscape streams with glory ! " 

— Religious Musings. 

5. Tenderness. — "The tenderness of sentiment which 
touches with significant color the pure white imagination is 
here [in ' The Ancient Mariner '] soft and piteous enough, but 
womanly rather than effeminate." — A. C. Swinburne. 



COLERIDGE 43 1 

" Critics . . . hardly realize enough the fine human- 
ity in Coleridge's poetry. . . . ' I conceive the leading 
point about Coleridge's work,' wrote Dante Rossetti, ' is its 
human love.' ... To understand and to feel his poetry 
aright we must think of him, not as forever floating on gold 
and emerald plumes somewhere above Mount Abora and feed- 
ing on the honey-dew but also as nestling in that cottage at 
Clevedon or at Nether Stowey with a wife and child, loving 
the Somerset hills and coombs, rich in friendships, and deeply 
interested in the great public events of his own time." — Ed- 
ward Dowden. 

" That gift of handling the finer passages of human feeling 
at once with power and delicacy ... is illustrated by 
a passage on Friendship." — Walter Pater. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God, who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all." 

— Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

" Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
And momentary pauses of the thought ! 
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart 
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, 
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
And in far other scenes ! " — Frost at Midnight. 

" O sweeter than the marriage-feast, 
'Tis sweeter far to me, 
To walk together to the kirk 
With a goodly company : 



432 COLERIDGE 

" To walk together to the kirk, 
And all together pray, 
While each to his great Father bends, 
Old men and babes and loving friends 
And youths and maidens gay." 

— Rime of the Ancient Mari?ier. 

6. Imaginative Beauty — Finish. — " Coleridge's late 
poems, 'Youth and Age,' 'The Garden of Boccaccio,' and 
' Work without Hope ' are perfect, flawless, priceless. 
Of passion Coleridge has nothing ; but for height and per- 
fection of imaginative quality he is the greatest of lyric 
poets. . . . His style, indeed, was a plant of strangely 
slow growth, but perfect and wonderful in its final flow- 
er. . . Of his best verses I venture to affirm that the 
world has nothing like them, and can never have ; that they 
are of the highest kind and of their own. . . . His 
poetry at the highest is beyond all words and all praise of 
men. He who can define it could unweave a rainbow. He 
who could praise it aright would be such another as the poet. 
There is a charm upon these pages [' Christabel ' and ' Kubla 
Khan '] which can only be felt in silent submission of wonder. 
' The Ancient Mariner ' is, without doubt, one of the triumphs 
of poetry. . . . For its execution, I presume no human 
ear is too dull to see how perfect it is and how high the kind 
of perfection. Here is not the speckless and elaborate finish 
which shows everywhere the fresh rasp of file or chisel on its 
smooth and spruce excellence ; this is faultless after the fashion 
of a flower or a tree. Thus it has grown ; not thus has it 
been carved. . . . Any separate line has its own heaven- 
ly beauty, but to cite separate lines is intolerable. They are 
to be received in rapture of silence : such a silence as Chap- 
man describes ; silence like a god, peaceful and young, which 

' Left so free mine ears 
That I might hear the music of the spheres, 
And all the angels singing out of heaven.' " 

— A. C. Swinburne. 



COLERIDGE 433 

" In poetic quality, above all in that most poetic of all 
qualities, a keen sense of and delight in beauty, they [< The 
1 Ancient Mariner ' and ' Christabel '] are quite out of pro- 
portion to his other compositions. ... A warm poetic 
joy in everything beautiful, whether it be a moral sentiment, 
like the friendship of Roland or Leoline, or only the flakes of 
falling light from the water-snakes — this is the predominant 
quality of the matter of his poetry, as cadence is the pre- 
dominant quality of its form." — Walter H. Pater. 

" He certainly was a main influence in showing the English 
mind how it could emancipate itself from the vulgarizing 
tyranny of common sense and in teaching it to recognize in 
the imagination an important factor not only in the happiness 
but in the destiny of man. ... I should find it hard to 
explain the singular charm of his diction ; there is so much 
nicety of art and purpose in it, whether for music or meaning. 
Nor does it need any explanation, for we all feel it. 
Coleridge's words have the unashamed nakedness of Scripture, 
of the Eden of diction, ere the voluble serpent entered in. 
This felicity of speech in Coleridge's best verse is more re- 
markable because it was an acquisition. . . . When he 
is well inspired, as in his best poetry he commonly is, he gives 
us the very quintessence of perception, the clearly crystallized 
precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of im- 
pression after the impertinent and obtrusive particles have 
evaporated from the memory. It is the pure, visual ecstasy 
disengaged from the confused and confusing material that 
gives it birth. It seems the very beatitude of artless sim- 
plicity, and is the most finished product of art. 
What I think constitutes his great power, as it certainly is 
his greatest charm, is the perpetual presence of imagina- 
tion. . . . His fancy and his diction would long ago 
have placed him above all his contemporaries had they been 
under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady 
will. . . . He has written some of the most poetical 
28 



434 COLERIDGE 

poetry in the language, and one poem, ' The Ancient Mariner,' 
not only unparalleled but unapproached in its kind, and that 
kind of the rarest. . . . This [his imagination] was the 
lifted torch (to borrow his own words again) that bade the 
starry walls of passages, dark before to the apprehension of 
the most intelligent reader, sparkle with lustre, latent in them 
to be sure, but not all their own. . . . She [imagina- 
tion] was his lifelong house-mate, if not always hanging over 
his shoulders and whispering in his ear, yet within easy call, 
like the Abra of Prior, 

' Abra was with him ere he spoke her name ; 
And though he called another, Abra came.' " 

— Lowell. 

" It would need Coleridge the critic to discover the secrets 
of the genius of Coleridge the poet. To solve intellectual 
puzzles in verse ... is, after all, not difficult ; but to 
find expressions in the language of thought corresponding to 
pure melody and imaginative loveliness, is a finer exercise of 
wit. . . . The device of animating the bodies of the 
dead crew with a troop of seraphs, whether the suggestion is 
due to St. Paulinus or to Wordsworth, is so conceived and 
executed as to illustrate admirably Coleridge's power of evok- 
ing beauty out of horror. Nor are his strange creatures of the 
sea those hideous worms which a vulgar dealer in the super- 
natural might have invented. Seen in a great calm by the 
light of the moon, these creatures are beautiful in the joy of 
their life. . . . This ode, ' Recantation,' is remarkable 
on account of the logic of passion and imagination 
with which the theme is involved." — Edward Dow den. 

" Coleridge plainly has the instinct for beauty and the spell 
of measured words. . . . The marvellous 'Rime,' with 
its ghostly crew, its spectral seas, its transformation of the 
elements, is pure and high-sustained imagination. 
In ' Christabel ' both the terror and the loveliness are haunt- 
ing." — E. C. Stedman. 



COLERIDGE 43$ 

" No man has all the sources of poetry in such profusion." 
— Sir Walter Scott. 

" His metaphors are often unique and beautiful. 
It may be questioned if any modern writer, whose works are 
equally limited, has illustrated his ideas with more originality 
and interest." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

11 He robes himself in moonlight and moves among images 
of which we cannot be assured for a while whether they are 
substantial forms of sense or fantastic visions." — John Foster. 

" No doubt he had imagination enough ... to have 
furnished forth a thousand poets." — J. C. Shairp. 

" He has only to draw the slides of his imagination, and a 
thousand subjects expand before him, startling him with their 
brilliancy or losing themselves in endless obscurity. 
It ['The Ancient Mariner'] is unquestionably a work of genius 
— of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination." — William 
Hazlitt. 

"They [' The Friend'' and 'Aids to Reflection'] excite 
wonder because the processes of the imagination and under- 
standing are continually crossing each other and producing 
magnificent disorder. Visions intermingle with deductions 
and inference follows image. He thinks emotions and feels 
thoughts."— E. P. Whipple. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

When the bent flower beneath the night-dew weeps 

And on the lake the silver lustre sleeps, 

Amid the paly radiance soft and sad, 

She meets my lonely path in moon-beams clad." 

— Lines on an Autumnal Evening. 

" The moon shines dim in the open air, 
And not a moonbeam enters here. 
But they without its light can see 
The chamber carved so curiously, 



436 COLERIDGE 

Carved with figures strange and sweet, 

All made out of the carver's brain, 

For a lady's chamber meet : 

The lamp with two-fold silver chain 

Is fastened to an angel's feet. 

The silver lamp burns dead and dim ; 

But Christabel the lamp will trim. 

She trimmed the lamp and made it bright, 

And left it swinging to and fro, 

While Geraldine, in wretched plight, 

Sank down upon the floor below." — Christabel. 

" O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind ! 

As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping; 
And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, 
O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping, 
And Ceres' golden fields ; the sultry hind 
Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping." 

— First Advent of Love. 

7. Seriousness — Self-reflection. — Coleridge wrote 
concerning his own abilities and convictions as follows: 
" I have felt, and deeply, that the poet's high functions were 
not my proper assignment ; that many may be worthy to 
listen to the strains of Apollo, of the sacred choir, and be able 
to discriminate and feel and love its genuine harmonies, yet 
not, therefore, called to receive the harp into their own 
hands and to join the concert. . . . From my childhood 
I have had no avarice, no ambition ; my very vanity in my 
vainest moods was nine-tenths of it the desire and delight and 
necessity of loving and being loved." 

" Always troubled with self-thought in the midst of nature, 
philosophizing about himself and her, moving off to visit 
other things than her, the poet can never see nature exactly as 
she is. ' ' — Stopford Brooke. 

" It was, perhaps, no more than a question of the state of his 
stomach whether his assiduous interest in himself should result 
in intellectual pride or in self-abasement." — G. E. Woodberry. 



COLERIDGE 437 

" In Coleridge we feel already that faintness and obscure 
dejection which clung like some contagious dampness to all his 
work. Wordsworth was to be distinguished by a joyful and 
penetrative conviction of the existence of certain latent affin- 
ities between nature and man which reciprocally gild the mind 
and nature with a kind of heavenly alchemy. ... In 
Coleridge's sadder, more purely intellectual cast of genius 
what with Wordsworth was sentiment or instinct became a 
philosophical idea or philosophical formula, developed, as 
much as possible, after the abstract and metaphysical fashion 
of the transcendental schools of Germany. . . . Perhaps 
the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess of seriousness, a 
seriousness arising not from any moral principle but from a 
misconception of the perfect manner. . . . He has, too, 
his passages of that sort of impassioned contemplation on the 
permanent and elementary conditions of nature and humanity 
which Wordsworth held to be the essence of poetic life. 
. The ' Lines to Joseph Cottle ' have the same philo- 
sophically imaginative character." — Walter Pater. 

" Coleridge, as his imaginative impulse flagged, passed into 
the reflective stage." — Leslie Stephen. 

" There were, perhaps, in Coleridge some special powers of 
fine analysis and introvertive speculation which seem to have 
predestined him for other work than poetry. . . . The 
poems of these two periods are few altogether, and what there 
are are more meditative than formerly, sometimes even hope- 
lessly dejected." — J. C. Shairp. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 
" What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine own ? 
What is there in thee, Man, that can be known ? 
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought, 
A phantom dim of past and future wrought, 
Vain sister of the worm — life, death, soul, clod — 
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God ! " 

— Know Thyself. 



438 COLERIDGE 

" My God ! it is a melancholy thing 

For such a man, who would full fain preserve 
His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel 
For all his human brethren — O my God ! 
It weighs upon the heart, that he must think 
What uproar and what strife may now be stirring 
This way or that way o'er these silent hills." 

— Fears in Solitude. 

" My genial spirits fail ; 
And what can these avail 

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ? 
It were a vain endeavor, 
Though I should gaze forever, 
On that green light that lingers in the west : 
I may not hope from outward forms to win 
The passion and the life whose fountains are within." 

— Dejection : An Ode. 

8. Assimilation — Imitation. — " It is remarkable that 
a poem which impresses us so much as an imaginative 
unity . . . should in great part have been a compilation 
from several brains and books. Young Cruikshank, a neigh- 
bor of Coleridge at Nether Stowey, had dreamed of a skeleton 
ship worked by a skeleton crew, and this was the starting-point 
of the whole. It has been suggested that the blessed spirits 
who bring the ship to harbor came from one of the epistles of 
St. Paulinus of Nola, the friend of St. Ambrose. The crime 
of the old Navigator . . . was Wordsworth's suggestion, 
derived from Shelvocke's ' Voyage around the World.' Shel- 
vocke describes the insupportable cold of the South Atlantic 
Ocean and the perpetual squalls of sleet and snow." — Edward 
Dowden. 

" Though he hag left on the system he inculcated such traces 
of himself as cannot fail to be left by any mind of original 
power, he was anticipated in all the essentials of his doctrine 
by the great Germans of the latter half of the last century, and 



COLERIDGE 439 

was accompanied in it by the remarkable series of their French 
expositors and followers." — John Stuart Mill. 

" The ' Hymn to Chamouni ' is an expansion of a short 
poem in stanzas, upon the same subject, by Frederica Brun, a 
female poet of Germany, previously known to the world under 
her maiden name of Miinter. The mere frame-work of the 
poem is exactly the same. ... In ' France ' a fine ex- 
pression or two are from ' Samson Agonistes.' 

"It is undeniable that Coleridge was guilty of a serious 
theft of metaphysical wares. . . . Coleridge . 
persuaded himself that he had really anticipated Schelling's 
thoughts and might justifiably appropriate Schelling's words." 
— Leslie Stephen. 

" The twelfth chapter of his ' Biographia Literaria,' which 
comes nearer than any other of his writings to being a full 
statement of his views, is indeed little more than a translation 
from Schelling."— W. M. Rossetti. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" No knell that tolled, but filled my anxious eye, 
And suffering Nature wept that one should die." 

— To a Young Lady. 

[Compare Shelley's " Retrospect."] 

" When, insupportably advancing, 

Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp." 

— France. 

[Compare " Sampson Agonistes."] 

[Compare, also, Coleridge's "Song of the Pixies" with 
Milton's "L* Allegro."] 

9. Unevenness — Confusion. — " His good work is the 
scantiest ever done by a man so famous in so long a life ; and 
much of his work is bad. His genius is fluctuant and moon- 
struck as the sea is. Among all verses of boys who 



440 COLERIDGE 

were to grow up to be great, I remember none so perfect, so 
sweet and deep in sense and sound as those which he is said 
to have written at school, headed ' Time, Real and Imagi- 
nary ; ' and following hard on these come a score or two of 
poems each more feeble and flatulent than the last. [See, for 
illustration, his ' Lines to a Young Ass.'] His genius walked 
for some time over much waste ground with irregular and un- 
sure steps. Some poems, touched with exquisite grace, with 
clear and pure harmony, are tainted with somewhat of feeble 
and sickly, which impairs our relish. . . . His political 
verse is most often weak of foot and hoarse of accent. He is 
like the legendary footless bird of Paradise. . . . Had 
his wings always held out, it had been well for him and us. 
Unhappily, this footless creature would perforce too often furl 
his wings in mid air and try his footing on earth, where his 
gait was like a swan's on shore. . . . Compare the nerve- 
less and hysterical verses headed ' Fears in Solitude ' with the 
majestic and masculine sonnet of Wordsworth written at the 
same time on the same subject. The lesser poet [Words- 
worth] speaks with a calm force of thought and resolution ; 
Coleridge wails, appeals, deprecates, objurgates in a flaccid and 
querulous fashion without heart or spirit." — A. C. Swinburne. 

"To many people Coleridge seemed to wander: and he 
seemed then to wander most when the compass and huge cir- 
cuit in which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into 
remote regions before they began to revolve. Long before 
this coming around commenced most people had lost him and 
naturally enough supposed he had lost himself. . . . How- 
ever, I can assert, from my long and intimate knowledge of 
Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was as inalienable 
from his modes of thought as grammar was from his language." 
— De Quincey. 

11 If anything imparts unity to his marred life, now soaring 
high or diving deep, now trailing in the dust with broken 
wing, it is this, that alike in the glory of his youth and the 



COLERIDGE 44 T 

dawn of his genius, in the infirmity and conscious self-degre- 
dation of his manhood, and amid the lassitude and languor of 
his latest days, he was always one who loved the light and 
grew toward it." — Edward Dowden. 

" Coleridge's creative mood was as brief as it was enrapt- 
uring. From his twenty-sixth to his twenty-eighth year he 
blazed out like Tycho Brahe's star, then sank his light in 
metaphysics, exhibiting little thenceforth of worth to lit- 
erature except a criticism of poets and dramatists." — E. C. 
Stedman. 

" Musical are many of the periods, beautiful the images, 
and here and there comes a single idea of striking value ; but 
for these we are obliged to hear many discursive exordiums, 
irrelevant episodes, and random speculations." — H. T. 
Tucker man. 

"Nothing gave his will force but high-pitched enthusiasm, 
and with its death the enduring energy of life visited him no 
more. . . . The weakness of his will was doubled by 
disease and trebled by opium. . . . There is no lesson 
so solemn in the whole range of modern poetry — genius with- 
out will — religion without strength — hope without persever- 
ance — art without the power of finish. . . . The volume 
we have from him influences us with all the sadness that a 
garden does in which two or three plants rise and flower per- 
fectly, but in which the rest are choked with weeds or run to 
seed." — Stopford Brooke. 

" Strong as is his pinion, his flight seems to resemble rather 
that of the eaglet than of the full-grown eagle, even to the 
last."— H. D. Traill. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" This day among the faithful placed 
And fed with fontal manna ; 
O with maternal title graced, 
Dear Anna's dearest Anna ! 



442 COLERIDGE 

" While others wish thee wise and fair, 
A maid of spotless fame, 
I'll breathe this more compendious prayer — 
May'st thou deserve thy name ! 

" So, when her tale of days all flown, 
Thy mother shall be missed here ; 
When Heaven at length shall claim its own 
And angels snatch their sister." 

— On the Christening of a Friend's Child. 

" Why need I say, Louisa dear ! 
How glad I am to see you here, 

A lovely convalescent ; 
Risen from the bed of pain and fear 

And feverish heat incessant. 

" The sunny showers, the dappled sky, 
The little birds that warble high, 

Their vernal loves commencing, 
Will better welcome you than I 
With their sweet influencing. 

" Believe me, while in bed you lay, 
Your danger taught us all to pray : 

You made us grow devouter ! 
Each eye looked up and seemed to say, 
How can we do without her." 

— To a Young Lady. 

" Mark this holy chapel well ! 
The birth-place, this, of William Tell. 
Here, where stands God's altar dread, 
Stood his parent's marriage-bed. 

" Here, first, an infant to her breast, 
Him his loving mother prest ; 
And kissed the babe, and blessed the day, 
And prayed as mothers used to pray. 



COLERIDGE 443 

" To Nature and to Holy Writ 
Alone did God the boy commit : 

Where flashed and roared the torrent, oft 
His soul found wings, and soared aloft ! 

" The straining oar and chamois chase 

Had formed his limbs to strength and grace : 
On wave and wind the boy would toss, 
Was great, nor knew how great he was ! " 

— TelVs Birthplace. 

ii. Abstraction— Obscurity— Lack of Logical Se- 
quence. — " His intense and overwrought abstraction, that 
sensuous fluctuation of soul, that floating fervor of fancy, 
whence his poetry rose as from a shifting sea, in faultless com- 
pletion of form and charm, had absorbed — if indeed there 
were any to absorb — all emotion of love or faith, all heroic 
beauty of moral passion, all inner and outer life of the only 
kind possible to such other poets as Dante or Shelley, Milton 
or Hugo. , . . Want of self-command left him often to 
the mercy of a caprice which swept him through tangled and 
tortuous ways of thought, through brakes and byways of 
fancy, where the solid subject in hand was either utterly lost 
and thrown over, or so transmuted and transfigured that any 
recognition of it was as hopeless as any profit. ... In 
an essay well worth translating out of jargon into some human 
language, he speaks of the ' holy jungle of human metaphysics.' 
Out of that holy and pestilential jungle he emerged but too 
rarely into sunlight and clear air." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" An infirm will, a dreamy ideality, a preternatural subtlety 
of thought and intense religious susceptibility were thrown 
among a people eminently practical and prosaic, impatient of 
romance, indifferent to intellectual refinements, strict in their 
moral expectations, scrupulous of the veracities, but afraid of 
the fervors of devotion." — James Martineau. 

" We see no sort of difference between his published and 



444 COLERIDGE 

his unpublished compositions. It is just as impossible to get 
at the meaning of the one as the other. , . . Each sev- 
eral work exists only in the imagination of the author, and 
is quite inaccessible to the understandings of his readers. 
. . . This work [" The Friend "] is so obscure that it has 
been supposed to be written in cypher, and that it is necessary 
to read it upwards and downwards, or backwards and for- 
wards, as it happens, to make head or tail of it. ... His 
talk was excellent if you let him start from no premises and 
come to no conclusion." — William Hazlitt. 

''You could not call this aimless, cloud-capt, cloud-bound 
lawlessly meandering discourse by the name of excellent talk. 
The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-meta- 
physicalo monotony left you at last with a very dreary feeling. 
Coleridge talked with musical energy two stricken 
hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicated no 
meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers. 
You swam and fluttered on in the mistiest wide unintelligible 
deluge of things, for the most part in a rather profitless, 
uncomfortable manner. ' ' — Carlyle. 

11 He considered that the object of poetry was to excite 
subtle trains of imaginative association ; but he was not satis- 
fied, like Wordsworth, with simply analyzing the impressions 
of his own mind. . . . His genius was of far too weird 
and romantic an order to succeed in romantic poetry. 
I think it is evident that he began to reason on the subtle 
affinities between sound and sense and to perceive that iso- 
lated romantic images might be so linked together by mere 
metrical movement as to produce the effect of unity which the 
mind requires in an ideal creation. . . . He resolved, 
in fact, deliberately, to compose as a musician. ... So 
little does the effect of Coleridge's poetry depend on the log- 
ical sequence of ideas that of his four really characteristic 
poems three are fragments and one is said to have been com- 
posed in a dream ; while ' The Ancient Mariner ' was founded 



COLERIDGE 445 

on the dream of a friend. . . . The effect, both in ' The 
Ancient Mariner' and in ' Christabel,' is produced by the 
combination of isolated, weird, and romantic images in a 
strange elfin metre. . . . His love of metaphysics in- 
duced him to believe that he could penetrate behind the veil 
of sense and establish a transcendental basis for the law of the 
association of ideas. ' ' — W. J. Courthope. 

" I cannot help being reminded of the partiality he often 
betrays for clouds. ' The Ancient Mariner ' is mar- 

vellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous incon- 
sequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland." — 
Lowell. 

" The subtle-souled psychologist." — Shelley. 

" Even ' Christabel ' is a figure somewhat too faintly drawn. 
All his other imaginings of women are exquisite 
abstractions, framed of purely feminine elements, but repre- 
senting woman rather than being themselves veritable women. 
In Coleridge's first volume of verse he had styled 
a considerable number of the pieces ' Effusions.' 
The poet, in these effusions, places himself in some environ- 
ment of beauty, submits his mind to the suggestions of the 
time and place, falls as it were of free will into a reverie, in 
which the thoughts and images meander stream-like at their 
own pleasure, or rather as if the power of volition were sus- 
pended and the current must needs follow the line of least 
resistance ; then, as if by good luck, comes the culmination 
of some soft subsidence, and the poem ceases. In the earlier 
odes . . . there is indeed an evolution, but it proceeds 
sometimes by those fits and starts which were supposed to 
prove in writers of the ode a kind of Pindaric excitement. 
The sequences of thought and feeling in these earlier 
poems are often either of the meditative-meandering or the 
spasmodic-passionate kind." — Edward Dowden. 

"The restless activity of Coleridge's mind in chasing ab- 
stract truths and burying himself in the dark places of human 



446 COLERIDGE 

speculation seemed to me, in a great measure, an attempt to 
escape out of his own personal wretchedness." — De Quincey. 
" [He] frequently changed his mind, and . . . cer- 
tainly appears to thinkers of a different order to add obscur- 
ity even to subjects which are necessarily obscure." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 



(i 



a 



But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts 

Unfeeling of our universal Sire, 

And that in his vast family no Cain 

Injures uninjured (in her best-aimed blow 

Victorious murder a blind suicide) 

Haply for this some younger angel now 

Looks down on human nature : and, behold ! 

A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad 

Embattled interests on each other rush 

With unhelmed rage ! " — Religious Musings. 

" Verse, a Breeze 'mid blossoms straying, 
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee — 
Both were mine ! Life went a maying 
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, 

When I was young ! 
When I was young ? — Ah, woeful When ! 
Ah for the Change 'twixt Now and Then ! 
This breathing House not built with hands, 
This body that does me grievous wrong, 
O'er aery Cliffs and glittering Sands, 
How lightly then it flashed along : — 
Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, 
On winding Lakes and Rivers wide, 
That ask no aid of Sail or Oar, 
That fear no spite of Wind or Tide ! " 

— Youth and Age. 

But properties are God : the naked mass 
(If mass there be, fantastic guest or ghost) 
Acts only by its inactivity. 



COLERIDGE , 447 

Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think 
That as one body seems the aggregate 
Of atoms numberless, each organized ; 
So by a strange and dim similitude 
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs 
With absolute ubiquity of thought 
(His one eternal self-affirming act!) 
All his involved Monads, that yet seem 
With various province and apt agency 
Each to pursue its own self-centring end." 

— The Destiny of Nations . 

12. Erudition — Intellectuality. — Hazlitt, who hated 
Coleridge as a politician and assailed him virulently, de- 
clared, " He is the only person I ever knew who answered to 
the idea of a man of genius. . . . His mind was clothed 
with wings, and, lifted on them, he raised philosophy to 
Heaven." Dr. Arnold called Coleridge "more of a great 
man than any one who has lived within the four seas in this 
generation." 

" The largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and 
the most comprehensive, that has yet existed among men. 
He spun daily and at all hours, for mere amusement 
of his own activities and from the loom of his own magical 
brain, theories . . . such as Schelling — no, nor any Ger- 
man that ever breathed, not John Paul — could have emulated 
in his dreams. . . . Coleridge was armed, at all points, 
with the scholastic erudition which bore upon all questions 
that could arise in polemic divinity." — De Quincey. 
" He was a mighty poet and 
A subtle-souled psychologist ; 
All things he seemed to understand, 
Of old or new, on sea or land, 
Save his own soul, which was a mist." 

— Charles La?nb. 



448 COLERIDGE 

" All other men whom I have ever known are mere chil- 
dren to him. ' ' — Southey. 

" Bentham excepted, no Englishman of recent date has left 
his impress so deeply in the opinions and mental tendencies 
of those among us who attempt to enlighten their practice by 
philosophical meditation. . . . No one has done more 
to shape the opinions of those among England's younger men 
who may be said to have any opinions at all. . . . He 
has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of 
philosophy within the bounds of traditional opinion. 
These two [Bentham and Coleridge] agreed in being the men 
who, in their age and country, did most to enforce by precept 
and example the necessity of a philosophy. They agreed in 
making it their occupation to recall opinions to first prin- 
ciples. ' ' — -John Stuart Mill. 

l( Coleridge's thought may almost be said to be as wide 
as life. . . . There were perhaps . . . some special 
powers of fine analysis and introvertive speculation, which 
seem to have predestined him for other work than poet- 
ry. . . Are they mistaken who see in the unearthly 
weirdness of ' The Ancient Mariner,' and the mysterious 
witchery of ' Christabel ' those very mental elements in solu- 
tion which, condensed and turned inward, would find their 
most congenial place in ' the exhausting atmosphere of tran- 
scendental ideas? ' . . . His eye flashed with a lightning 
glance from the most abstract truth to the minutest practi- 
cal detail and back again from this to the abstract princi- 
ple. . . . When once his mental powers begin to work, 
their movements are on a vastness of scale and with a many- 
sidedness of view, which, if they render him hard to follow, 
make him also stimulative and suggestive of thought beyond 
all other modern writers. . . . His mind was a very 
treasure-house of ideas. . . . These [Juvenile Poems] 
mark, perhaps, the tumult of his thick-thronging thoughts, 
struggling to utter themselves with force and freshness, yet 



COLERIDGE 449 

not quite disengaged from the old commonplaces of poetic 
diction, ' eve's dusky car ' and such like, and from those 
frigid personifications of abstract qualities in which the former 
age delighted." — J. C. Shairp. 

" Since Shakespeare and Milton we have had nothing at 
all comparable to him." — Walter Savage Landor. 

" His mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians 
as well as the Greeks and Romans ; and though we have 
heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we 
have heard him in Chemistry puzzle Sir Humphry Davy and 
prove to his own satisfaction that Leibnitz and Newton, 
though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. 
If there be any man of great and original genius alive at this 
moment in Europe, it is S. T. Coleridge. . . . His is one 
of the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth its 
influence in the majestic language of England." — Professor 
Wilso?i [Christopher North]. 

" Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the sources of sub- 
limity in the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges through 
all history and science, investigating all that has really exist- 
ed and all that has had foundation only in the wildest and 
strangest minds. . . . The term ' myriad-minded,' which 
he has happily applied to Shakespeare, is truly descriptive of 
himself. . . . The riches of his mind were developed 
not in writing but in his speech — conversation I can scarcely 
call it — which no one who once heard can ever forget. Un- 
able to work in solitude, he sought the gentle stimulus of 
social admiration, and under its influence poured forth with- 
out stint the marvellous resources of a mind rich in the spoils 
of time — richer far in its own glorious imagination and deli- 
cate fancy." — T. N. Talfourd. 

" 1 have known many men who have done wonderful things, 
but the most wonderful man I ever knew was Coleridge." — 
Wordsworth. 

" Thus each thought that was to have been only one 



450 COLERIDGE 

thought, and to have transmitted the reader's mind im- 
mediately forward, becomes an exceeding complex combina- 
tion of thought, almost a dissertation in miniature, and thus 
our journey to the assigned end (if, indeed, we are carried so 
far, which is not always the case) becomes nothing less than 
a visit of inspection to every garden, manufactory, museum, 
and antiquity situated near the road throughout its whole 
length. . . . Or if we might compare the series of ideas 
in a composition to a military line, we should say that many 
of the author's images are supernumerarily attended by so 
many related but secondary and subordinate ideas, that the 
array of thought has some resemblance to what that military 
line would be if many of the men, veritable and brave sol- 
diers, stood in the ranks surrounded by their wives and chil- 
dren. . . . His are the most extraordinary faculties I 
have ever yet seen resident in a form of flesh and blood." 
— -John Forster. 

"Samuel Taylor Coleridge was like the Rhine, 'that ex- 
ulting and abounding river; ' he was full of words, full of 
thoughts ; yielding both in an unfailing flow that delighted 
many and perplexed a few of his hearers. He was a man of 
prodigious and miscellaneous reading, always willing to com- 
municate all he knew. . . . From Alpha to Omega all 
was familiar to him. . . . He went from flower to flower 
throughout the whole garden of learning, like the butterfly or 
the bee — most like the bee. . . . He was so full of in- 
formation that it was a relief to him to part with some of it 
to others. ... I imagine that no man had ever read so 
many books and at the same time had digested so much." 
— B. W. Procter. 

"The ardor, delicacy, energy of his intellect, his resolute 
desire to get at the roots of things and deeper yet, if deeper 
might be, will always enchant and attract all spirits of like 
mould and temper." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" The molten material of his mind, too abundant for the 



COLERIDGE 45 1 

capacity of the mould, overflowed it in fiery gushes of fiery 
excess. . . . They [his associates] all thought of him 
what Scott said of him, ' No man has all the resources of 
poetry in such profusion.' " — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATION. 

" As ere from Lieule-Oaive's vapory head 
The Laplander beholds the far-off sun 
Dart his slant beam on unobeying snows, 
While yet the stern and solitary night 
Brooks no alternate sway, the Boreal Morn 
With mimic lustre substitutes its gleam, 
Guiding his course or by Niemi lake 
Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone 
Of Solfar-kapper, while the snowy blast 
Drifts arrowy by, or eddies round his sledge, 
Making the poor babe at its mother's back 
Scream in its scanty cradle : he the while 
Wins gentle solace as with upward eye 
He marks the streamy banners of the North, 
Thinking himself those happy spirits shall join 
Who there in floating robes of rosy light 
Dance sportively."— The Destiny of Nations. 



WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850 

Biographical Outline. — William Wordsworth, born at 
Cockermouth, England, April 7, 1770; father an attorney 
and agent to Sir James Lowther, afterward Lord Lonsdale ; 
mother the daughter of a mercer of Westmoreland ; Words- 
worth's boyhood is passed partly at Cockermouth and partly 
with his mother's parents at Penrith ; he records of himself 
that, as a child, he was of ' ' a stiff, moody, and violent temper, ' ' 
and that he once seriously contemplated suicide on being 
checked for some boyish error ; during his early boyhood he 
read "all of Fielding's works, 'Don Quixote,' 'Gil Bias,' 
and any part of Swift that I liked — ' Gulliver's Travels ' and 
' The Tale of a Tub ' being both much to my taste ; " in his 
ninth year Wordsworth is sent to a school at Hawkshead ; his 
first verses are written as school task-work, and are entitled 
"Summer Vacation;" to these he adds voluntarily other 
verses on " The Return to School ; " in his fifteenth year he 
wins the admiration of his fellow-pupils by writing verses in 
honor of the second centenary of the Hawkshead school, 
which was founded in 1585 by Archbishop Sandys; Words- 
worth afterward called these youthful verses " a tame imitation 
of Pope's versification and a little in his style; " during his 
school-days he is profoundly impressed by the majestic scenery 
about him in the vicinity of Hawkshead ; after his father's 
death, in 1783, Wordsworth is placed under the care of two 
uncles, who enable him to continue his education ; an estate 
of ^5,000, which belonged to his father, had been seized by 
Lord Lonsdale, and it was not till that nobleman's death, in 
1 80 1, after most of the remaining fortune of the family had 
been spent in litigation over the matter, that it was recovered ; 

452 



WORDSWORTH 453 

meantime the poet's uncles recognize the talent of the young 
man and his brother Christopher (afterward master of Trinity- 
College, Cambridge), and give to each a course at the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. 

Wordsworth enters St. John's College, Cambridge, in Oc- 
tober, 1787, thus becoming a successor of Spenser, Dryden, 
Ben Jonson, Milton, and Gray, and a predecessor of Carlyle 
and Byron — all Cambridge men ; the tranquil atmosphere 
and the noble associations of Cambridge deeply affect the 
young poet ; he spends his first long college vacation at 
Hawkshead, where he develops " a somewhat closer interest in 
the joys and sorrows of the villagers ; " his second long vaca- 
tion is spent at Penrith with that sister who was to be his life- 
long companion, critic, and friend ; his third college summer 
is spent with his friend Jones in a walking tour through 
Switzerland — an experience narrated later in his "Prelude" 
and then as rare as it is now common among young collegians; 
he is graduated, B.A., from Cambridge in June, 1791, and 
leaves the university with no fixed plans for the future ; he first 
goes to London, and spends some time in walking about the 
streets of the metropolis, studying the types of humanity found 
there ; from this London sojourn result the " Reverie of Poor 
Susan" and the "Sonnet on Westminster Bridge; " in No- 
vember, 1 79 1, Wordsworth lands in France, passes through 
Paris (then in the throes of the French Revolution), and 
settles at Orleans to study the French language ; he spends 
nearly a year at Orleans and at Blois ; he returns as far as Paris 
in October, 1792, and thinks seriously of entering the struggle 
as a leader of the Girondists, but his uncles compel him, by 
stopping his supply of funds, to return to England late in 
1792; during 1792 he publishes two poems, "The Evening 
Walk" and "Descriptive Essays," and thus attracts the atten- 
tion of Coleridge, though the poems are not otherwise noticed; 
being at heart a democrat, Wordsworth is seriously disturbed 
when England declares war against the French republic ; in 



454 WORDSWORTH 

1795 his gifted sister becomes his permanent companion, and 
the poet finds in her society much solace ; during this year, 
on the death of Raisley Calvert, a friend whom Wordsworth 
had tenderly nursed while he was dying of consumption, the 
poet receives a bequest of ^900. 

In the autumn of 1795 ne settles with his sister in a snug 
cottage at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire ; he 
records afterward that he and his sister lived for seven or eight 
years on the interest of the ^900 plus a legacy of j£ 100 that 
his sister had received and about ^100 that he had received 
from his "Lyrical Ballads ; " while at Racedown Wordsworth 
completes his " Guilt and Sorrow," and writes his tragedy, 
" The Borderers " and also "The Ruined Cottage," afterward 
embodied in the "Excursion;" the poem last named is 
warmly praised by Coleridge, who visits the Wordsworths at 
Racedown in June, 1797; in July, 1797, they remove to 
Alfoxden, a large house in Somersetshire, near Netherstowey, 
where Coleridge was then living ; here Wordsworth increases 
his income by taking as a pupil a young son of Basil Montagu, 
and here he writes many of his shorter poems; during a brief 
excursion among the Cumberland hills, in the autumn of 1797, 
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister collaborate in planning 
"The Ancient Mariner," which Coleridge afterward puts into 
form; Wordsworth is said to have suggested the well-known 
incident of the albatross and the navigation of the ship by dead 
men ; in the autumn of 1 797 was published the volume of poems 
by Wordsworth and Coleridge called "Lyrical Ballads;" 
besides the trivial poems of Wordsworth that have been so 
severely and justly criticised, this volume contained "Lines 
Written above Tintern Abbey," a poem written at Tintern 
Abbey in a single day during 1798, and now generally rec- 
ognized as the author's greatest short poem. 

Soon after the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" 
Wordsworth and his sister sail for Germany, and spend four 
months at Goslar, near the Hartz forest, for the purpose of 



WORDSWORTH 455 

perfecting themselves in the knowledge of the German lan- 
guage ; while at Goslar Wordsworth writes ''Lucy Gray," 
"Ruth," " Nutting," " The Poet's Epitaph," and others of 
his best short poems ; on the day when he leaves Goslar he 
begins a long poem describing the development of his own 
mind, addressed to Coleridge and written as a confidential 
communication between intimate friends; this poem was not 
published till after Wordsworth's death, when his wife named 
it " The Prelude ; " he finishes " The Prelude" in 1805, and 
designs it as an introduction to a projected poem to be called 
"The Recluse," of which only the second division — "The 
Excursion" — has ever been published, though Wordsworth 
wrote one book of the first part ; the material gathered for the 
third part of " The Recluse " was afterward incorporated into 
the poet's other works ; returning to the Lake country in the 
spring of 1799, he becomes remarkably familiar with the dis- 
trict and its people; his biographer asserts that " there was 
scarcely a mile of territory in the Lake country over which he 
had not wandered ; " the summits of Coniston and Esthwaite 
suggest to him many of his finest poetic flights, but the lakes 
of Grasmere and Rydal form the centre of his life and wander- 
ings ; his relation to the Cumberland scenery appears espe- 
cially in his " Poems on the Naming of Places ; " two of the 
" Evening Voluntaries " were composed by the side of Rydal 
Mere, and "The Wild Duck's Nest" was on one of the 
Rydal islands ; soon after his return from Germany Words- 
worth settles, with his sister, at Townend, Grasmere ; on Octo- 
ber 4, 1802, he is married to Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Pen- 
rith, a simple village maiden without the advantages of the 
schools, but herself a true poet in feeling and expression ; 
Wordsworth records that his wife was the author of the two 
following lines of " The Daffodils : " 

" They flash upon that inward eye 
That is the bliss of solitude." 



45^ WORDSWORTH 

The life of the Wordsworths at Townend is even less luxuri- 
ous than that of the peasants about them, and fully illustrates 
" plain living and high thinking; " they have " a boat upon 
the lake and a small orchard and smaller garden," but their 
parlor is floored with stone, and their only servant an old woman 
of sixty ; here Wordsworth continues his intimacy with Cole- 
ridge, and the latter poet, with his family, is often a member 
of Wordsworth's household for months together ; during 1802 
Wordsworth writes "The Daffodils" and the sonnets on 
"Westminster Bridge" and "Calais Sands;" in 1803 he 
makes a tour through Scotland with his sister, and writes "The 
Highland Girl ; " during the same year he forms a friendship 
with Sir George Beaumont, a wealthy nobleman of Essex, and 
Beaumont presents him with " a beautiful piece of land " at 
Applethwaite under Skiddaw, hoping thus to induce Words- 
worth to settle there near their mutual friend Coleridge ; this 
friendship of Wordsworth with Beaumont, who was himself a 
poet and a landscape-painter, lasted till that nobleman's death 
in 1827, and the intercourse was of much service to Words- 
worth in developing his appreciation of art. During the year 
1800 the poet's brother John, captain of an East Indiaman, 
had spent eight months with him at Grasmere, and the two 
brothers had become deeply attached to each other after years 
of separation ; the drowning of this brother, with all on board 
his ship, in 1805, and the loss of two children in 181 2, tend to 
sadden the later years and later poetry of Wordsworth ; five 
children in all were born to him in Grasmere ; in the spring 
of 1808 he removes to a larger house called Allan Bank at the 
north end of Grasmere, and thence, in 181 1, to the Parsonage 
at Grasmere ; his poem " The Triad " describes his daughter 
Dora, while his other daughter, Catherine, is described in sev- 
eral of his sonnets ; his passionate love of liberty and his high 
sense of national honor appear in his sonnets dedicated "To 
Liberty," written from 1802 to 1816, and in his prose tract 
on "The Convention of Cintra," written in 1808. 



WORDSWORTH 457 

In January, 1813, the Wordsworths remove to their perma- 
nent home at Rydal Mount, where the poet remains till his 
death ; about this time, through the interest of Lord Lons- 
dale, Wordsworth is appointed distributor of stamps for the 
county of Westmoreland, and to this orifice is added soon after- 
ward the same post for Cumberland ; he enjoyed the revenue 
from these offices till 1842, when it was transferred to his son ; 
later Wordsworth refused an offer of the more lucrative office 
of collector of the port at Whitehaven, refusing to " exchange 
his sabine villa for a load of care ; " among his near neighbors 
at Rydal Mount are De Quincey, Southey, Professor Wilson 
(" Christopher North"), Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and Hartley 
Coleridge, and he is much in their society ; many of the pas- 
sages in Wordsworth's poems are really photographs of his 
neighbors, and " The Waggoner " is a picture of what the poet 
imagined that he himself might have been under like circum- 
stances ; although his poems are greeted with more ridicule 
than has ever been given, perhaps, to any others, Wordsworth 
never loses his calm assurance and his confidence in the supe- 
riority of his work ; while this mental attitude saves him from 
much suffering, it prevents that improvement which he might 
have made through a proper recognition of the value of honest 
criticism on his work ; he is more sensitive, however, to the 
pecuniary results of the ridicule; in 1820, when he is fifty 
years old, and after he has been writing for twenty-five years, 
he confesses : " The whole of my returns from my writing 
trade have not amounted to seven score pounds;" " The 
Excursion " appears in 181 4, and in 181 5 Wordsworth repub- 
lishes his minor poems, introducing the volume with a preface 
and a supplementary essay on the theory of poetry — an essay 
since widely known and highly estimated. 

In the summer of 1820, with his wife and sister, he makes 
a tour of France and Italy ; in 1823 he travels in Holland, and 
in 1824 in North Wales ; in 1828 he is in Belgium with Cole- 
ridge, and in 1829 in Ireland ; in 183 1 he visits Scott at Ab- 



458 WORDSWORTH 

botsford, just before the departure of the great novelist for 
Italy in search of health; during this visit Scott goes with 
Wordsworth to Yarrow, and the incident gives rise to the 
poem " Yarrow Revisited " and the sonnet beginning "A 
trouble not of clouds nor weeping rain; " in 1833 Words- 
worth makes another tour in Scotland, and in 1837 a longer 
one through Italy, with Crabbe Robinson; in 1842 he pub- 
lishes " Poems, Chiefly of Early and Later Years," including 
" Ecclesiastical Sketches," a series of sonnets begun in 182 1 ; 
the impairment of his sister's mental faculties, his own severe 
illness in 1832, and the gradual decline in the mental powers 
of his friend Coleridge sadden the poet's last years ; between 
1830 and 1840 he "passes from the apostle of a clique into 
the most illustrious man of letters in England ; " an American 
edition of his poems appears in 1837, and Oxford confers upon 
him the degree of D.C.L. in 1839; in October. 1842, he is 
granted an annuity of ,£300 from the civil list " for distin- 
guished literary merit ; " on the death of Southey, in March, 
1843, Wordsworth is offered the laureateship, which he at first 
declines as "imposing duties which I cannot undertake;" 
but, on being assured by the Lord Chamberlain that the nom- 
ination does not imply the imposition of any duties, but is 
given rather as " that tribute of respect which is justly due to 
the first of living poets," he accepts the laureateship, and " fills 
the office for seven years with quiet dignity ; " his only com- 
positions of any importance after becoming laureate are his 
two prose letters protesting against the projected Kendal and 
Windermere railway through the Lake District ; he never re- 
covers from the shock caused by the death, in 1847, of Dora, 
his only daughter who survived childhood ; he dies at Rydal 
Mount, April 23, 1850. 



WORDSWORTH 459 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON WORDSWORTH. 

Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 

4: 354-415 and 6: 99-115. 
Whipple, E. P., "Literature and Life." Boston, 1888, Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co., 253-302. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 

1 : 222-266. 
Hazlitt, Wm., "The Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, Bell, 149-165. 
Morley, J., " Studies in Literature." London, 1891, Macmillan, 1-54. 
Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 

Holt, 3 : 82-90. 
De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, 11 : 294-326. 
Pater, W., "Appreciations." New York, 1890, Macmillan, 37-64. 
Talfourd, T. N., "Critical and Miscellaneous Writings." Boston, 

1854, Phillips, Sampson & Co., 47-59. 
Scherer, E., " Essays on English Literature." New York, 1891, 

Scribner, 174-226. 
Wilson, J. (Christopher North), " Essays, Critical and Imaginative." 

Edinburgh, 1856, Blackwood, 1 : 387-408. 
Shairp, J. S. C, "Studies in Poetry." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 1-90. 
Brooke, S. A., " Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875, 

Appleton, 93-287. 
Hutton, R. H., " Literary Essays." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 

90-132. 
Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 3: 

270-308. 
Arnold, M., " Essays in Criticism." New York, Macmillan, 2: 122- 

163. 
Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1882, 

Macmillan, I : 216-243 an ^ 254-276. 
Jeffrey, F., "Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, Hart, 

6: 457-473- 
Hutton, R. A., "Essays in Theology and Criticism." London, 1877, 

Daldy, 80-118. 
Shairp, J. S. C, "Poetic Interpretations of Nature." Edinburgh, 

1877, Douglass, 225-270. 
Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul, 

122-158. 
Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 

112-152. 



460 WORDSWORTH 

Stephen, L., " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century " 
London, 1881, Smith, Elder & Co., 358-362 and 451-453. 

Shairp, J. S. C, "Aspects of Poetry." Boston, 1882, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., 270-323. 

Hudson, H. N., "Studies in Wordsworth." Boston, 1884, Little, 
Brown & Co., v. index. 

Mason, E. T., "Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 
1885, Scribner, 2: 9-54. 

De Vere, A., " Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." New York, 1887, Macmil- 
lan, 1 : 104-264. 

Wilde, Lady J. F., " Men, Women, and Books." London, 1881, Ward, 
Lock & Bowden, 247-260. 

Brimley, G., " Essays." London, 1882, Macmillan, 102-184. 

Carlyle, T., "Reminiscences." New York, 1881, Scribner, 528-536. 

Bagehot, W., " Literary Studies." Hartford, 1889, Travellers' Insur- 
ance Company, I : 200-224. 

Lowell, J. R., "Among My Books." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 201-251. 

Lowell, J. R., "Democracy," etc. Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & 
Co., 98-115. 

Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 
207-213. 

Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 
1 : 470-488. 

Church, R. W., " Dante and Other Essays." New York, 1891, Mac- 
millan, 193-221. 

Coleridge, S. T., "Works." New York, 1871, Harper, 3: 191-206, 
364-375, and 394-434; 7: 169-173. 

Browning, Mrs., "The English Poets." New York, 1863, Miller, 
214-233. 

Ward, T. H. (Church), "The English Poets." New York, 1881, Mac- 
millan, 4: 1-16. 

Dawson, W. J., "The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 
Whittaker, 91-155. 

Home, R. H., "A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 

177-193- 

Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
taker, 203-235. 

Rossetti, W. M., "Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 203-225. 

Caine, H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Eliot Stock, 1-29. 

Devey, J., " Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 87-104. 

Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 
Francis, 214 226. 



WORDSWORTH 46 1 

Chorley, H. T., " Authors of England." London,* 1888, C. Tilt, 87- 

93- 
Procter, B. W., "An Autobiographical Fragment." Boston, 1877, 

Roberts, 139-144. 
Fortnightly Review, 21 : 455-465 (W. Pater). 
Contemporary Review, 33: 734~75 6 ( E - Dowden). 
The Month, 38 : 465-489 (De Vere). 
Atlantic Monthly, 16: 514-525 (A. F. Sanborn). 
Every Saturday, 16 : 68-575 (W. Pater). 
Catholic World, 22 : 329-338 (De Vere). 
Eclectic Magazine, 94: 22-42 (J. A. Symonds) ; 87: 447-462 (L. 

Stephen). 
Good Words, 14 : 649-666 (Shairp). 
American Whig Revieiv, 448-457 (O. W. Holmes). 
Academy, 35: 17-18 (E. Dowden); 22: III-II2 (Dowden). 
Nineteenth Century, 15: 583 and 764-790 (Swinburne); 26: 435-45 1 

(Minto). 
Nation, 45 ; 487-489 (G. E. Woodberry). 
Critic, 3 : 333 (W. S. Kennedy). 
National Revietv, 4: 512-527 (Courthope). 

North British Review, 13: 473-508 (Masson) ; 41: 1-54 (Shairp). 
Harper's Magazine, 62: 7-27 (M. D. Conway). 
Edinburgh Review, 24: 1-30 (Jeffrey) ; II: 2 14-23 1 (Jeffrey). 
New Englander, 9 : 583-616 (N. Porter). 
North American Review, 59: 352-384 (Whipple). 
Tail's Magazine, 6 : 453-464 (De Quincey). 
Quarterly Review, 12 : 100-111 (C. Lamb). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Severe Simplicity. — " Wordsworth's true simplicity, 
the simplicity which was the natural vehicle of his grand and 
solemn thoughts, the simplicity which came from writing 
close to the truth of things and making the word rise out 
of the thought conceived, cannot be too much commended. 
. . They [the poems] combine depth of insight with a 
most exquisite simplicity of phrase. . . . Worldlings 
may sneer at the simplicity of some of his delineations of rural 
life, but they contain descriptions which for simplicity and 
truth . . . can hardly be excelled." — E. P. Whipple, 



462 WORDSWORTH 

" Our language owes him for the habitual purity and absti- 
nence of his style, and we who speak it for having emboldened 
us to take delight in simple things and to trust ourselves to 
our own instincts. . . . Wordsworth's better utterances 
have the bare sincerity . . . that belongs to the grand 
simplicities of the Bible. . . . Certainly a great part of 
him will perish, but because too easily understood." — Lowell. 

" He chooses low and rustic life, because in that condition 
the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and 
permanent forms of nature. . . . He has a predilection 
for a style the most remote from the false and showy splen- 
dor which he wished to explode, an austere purity of lan- 
guage, both grammatically and logically. . . . No other 
man has so steadily asserted the dignity of virtue and of sim- 
plicity." — Coleridge. 

" He chooses to depict people of humble life because, being 
nearer to nature, they are on the whole more impassioned." 
— Walter Pater. 

" What is most precious in our common human nature 
seemed to him to be whatever is most simple, primitive, and 
permanent. . . . What is best in language are those sim- 
ple, stirring, and living forms of speech." — Edward Dowden. 

" No poet ever drew from simpler sources than W T ordsworth, 
but none ever made so much out of so little. . . . He 
can deal with facts only when they are simple enough to em- 
body but a single idea. . . . His 'plain imagination and 
severe,' as he himself calls it." — P. H. Hutton. 

" There is in them [Wordsworth's poems] the freshness, 
the ethereality, the innocent brightness of a new-born day. " 
— -J. C. Shairp. 

" It was his theory of poetic diction that it should be that 
which men commonly use when in rustic life they express 
themselves simply. ... I cannot but think that the ele- 
ment of grandeur of style flowed largely from the solemn sim- 
plicity. ' ' —Stopford Brooke. 



WORDSWORTH 463 

" The result [of Wordsworth's effort] was full of simplicity, 
sincerity, beneficence. . . . His purpose was to bring 
men's minds back to simplicity in subject and language. 
The simplicity of his subjects and of his manner, too, 
passes into triviality — the simplicity of his style into poverty. 
. He undertook the mission of rehabilitating simplicity, 
as well in tone as in feeling. . . . Never has there been 
expressed as a whole with such puissant simplicity . 
sentiments which Nature awakes." — Ed?no?id Scherer. 

11 Wordsworth owed much to Burns and to a style of^ per- 
fect plainness. . . . He can and will treat such a subject 
with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere 
naturalness. ' ' — Matthew Arnold. 

" His works are matchless for their power and simplicity 
and noble beauty. . . . Wordsworth has a fearless reli- 
ance on the simple forces of expression in contrast to the more 
ornate ones. . . . He accepted it as his mission to open 
the eyes and widen the thoughts of his countrymen and to 
teach them to discern in the humblest and most unexpected 
forms the presence of what was kindred to what they had long 
recognized as the highest and greatest."—^. W. Church. 

11 There is no studied phrase-making, no falsetto, 
all simple and pure soul. . . . He gladly returns to the 
simple produce of the common day. . . . Wordsworth 
used the language of common life. . . . The language is 
so clear and simple that a child may understand it, yet so pure 
and true that the ripest minds can hardly fail to relish it. 
His is a style of beauty which is most adorned by 
being wholly unadorned. . . . Strong was his passion 
for severe purity and solidity of form." — H. N. Hudson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" From his sixth year the boy of whom I speak 
In summer tended cattle on the hills ; 
But through ihe inclement and the perilous days 



464 WORDSWORTH 

Of long-continuing winter he repaired, 

Equipped with satchel, to a school that stood 

Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge, 

Remote from view of city spire or sound 

Of minster clock. From that bleak tenement 

He many an evening to his distant home 

In solitude returning, saw the hills 

Grow larger in the darkness ; all alone, 

Beheld the stars come out above his head, 

And travelled through the wood with no one near 

To whom he might confess the things he saw." 

— The Excursion. 

" The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink ; 

I heard a voice ; it said, ' Drink, pretty creature, drink ! ' 

And looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied 

A snow-white mountain lamb with a maiden at its side. 



a 



Nor sheep nor kine were near ; the lamb was all alone, 
And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone ; 
With one knee on the grass did the little maiden kneel 
While to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening meal." 

— The Pet Lamb. 

" It was a dreary morning when the wheels 
Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds, 
And nothing cheered our way till first we saw 
The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift 
Turrets and pinnacles in answering files, 
Extended high above a dusky grove. 
Advancing, we espied upon the road 
A student clothed in gown and tasselled cap 
Striding along as if o'ertasked by Time, 
Or covetous of exercise and air ; 
He passed — nor was I master of my eyes 
Till he was left an arrow's flight behind. 
As near and nearer to the spot we drew, 
It seemed to suck us in with an eddy's force." 

— Residence at Cambridge. 



WORDSWORTH 465 

2. Profound Meditation — Contemplation. — " The 

predominating characteristic of Wordsworth's mind is thought- 
fulness, a thoughtfulness in which every faculty of his mind 
and every disposition of his heart meet and mingle ; and the 
result is an atmosphere of thought, giving a soft charm to all 
the objects it surrounds and permeates. . . . The most 
common exercise of his imagination is what we may call its 
meditative action — its still, calm, searching insight into spir- 
itual truth and into the spirit of nature. In these, analysis 
and reflection become imaginative, and the ' more than rea- 
soning mind' of the poet overleaps the bound of positive 
knowledge. . . . He is not, in this meditative mood, a 
mere moralizing dreamer, a vague and puerile rhapsodist, as 
some have maliciously asserted, but a true poetic philosopher. 
The intensity with which Wordsworth meditates has 
done much to give him a reputation as a reasoner. 
His nature is rather contemplative than impulsive." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

* 'One lesson, if men must have lessons, he conveys more 
clearly than all, the supreme importance of contemplation in 
the conduct of life. . . . Contemplation, impassioned 
contemplation — that is with Wordsworth the end in itself, the 
perfect end. . . . And the meditative poet is, in reality, 
only clearing the scene for the exhibition of emotion." — 
Walter Pater. 

" Meditation and sympathy were the two main strings of 
his serene and stormless lyre. . . . He could fill his 
meditation with the spirit of a whole people." — A. C. Swin- 
burne. 

" His imagination is most active when it is pervaded by 
a calm yet intense and lofty spirit of meditation. 
Meditation, imagination, and description bear everywhere 
the impress of his own individuality, and appear to be the 
characteristics of his poems. . . . He is not merely a 
melodious writer or a powerful utterer of deep emotion but a 
30 



466 WORDSWORTH- 

true philosopher. . . . Wordsworth's meditations upon 
flowers or animal life are impressive because they have 
been touched by this constant sympathy. . . . He 
finds lonely meditation so inspiring that he is too indifferent 
to the troubles of less clear-sighted human beings." — Leslie 
Stephen, 

" Wordsworth's poetry is great in thought. . . . He 
himself has told us that his paramount aim was to be a philo- 
sophic poet. . . . He was a man of high philosophic 
thought and high moral purpose. . . . He is England's 
great philosophic, as Shakespeare is her great dramatic, and 
Milton her great epic, poet. . . . With what unpre- 
meditated grace he could suggest his philosophy in connec- 
tion with everyday objects ! " — Aubrey De Vere. 

" Though his poetry reads so transcendental, and is so 
meditative, there never was a poet who was so little of a 
dreamer as Wordsworth. . . . He uses human sorrow as 
an influence to stir up his own meditative spirit. . . . 
Contemplative as he was, his mind was too concentrated and 
intense for general truth. . . . The ballads are not under- 
stood unless . . . one enters into the contemplative tone 
in which they were written." — R. H. Hutton. 

" The essence of Wordsworth's mind in poetry is contem- 
plative imagination. . . . He is a meditative and inten- 
sive poet — as such admirable, perhaps unequalled." — W. M. 
Rossetti. 

" He is first and foremost a philosophical thinker; a man 
whose intention and purpose of life it was to think out for 
himself, faithfully and seriously, the questions concerning 
' Man and Nature and Human Life.' . . . He is as much 
in earnest as a prophet, and he holds himself as responsible 
for obedience to its [the divine voice's] call and for its fulfil- 
ment as a prophet." — R. W. Church. 

" Wordsworth was encumbered, as it were, by reflective- 
ness of manner." — /. C. Shairp. 



WORDSWORTH 4^7 

"Few have ventured to send into the world essentially 
meditative poems, which none but the thoughtful can enjoy." 
— T.N. Talfourd. 

" He is given to meditation, and much contemptuous of 
the unmeditative world and its noisy nothingness." — Carlyle. 

" Even the name of thinker but half suits him, he is the 
contemplative man." — Edmond Scherer. 

" He is essentially a man of inner feelings, that is, en- 
grossed by the concerns of the soul. . . . The peace was 
so great within him and around him that he could perceive 
the imperceptible. ' ' — Taine. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Absence and death, how differ they ? and how 
Shall I admit that nothing can restore 
What one short sigh so easily removed ? 
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought — 
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know, 
O teach me calm submission to thy will ! " 

— Maternal Grief. 

11 Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind ; 
Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays ; 
Heavy is woe ; — and joy, for human-kind, 
A mournful thfng, so transient is the blaze ! 
Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days 
Who wants the glorious faculty assigned 
To elevate the more-than-reasoning mind 
And color life's dark cloud with orient rays. 
Imagination is that sacred power, 
Imagination lofty and refined : 
'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower 
Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind 
Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, 
And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind." 

— Sonnets. 



468 WORDSWORTH 

" Yet may we not entirely overlook 
The pleasure gathered from the rudiments 
Of geometric science. Though advanced 
In these inquiries, with regret I speak, 
No farther than the threshold, there I found 
Both elevation and composed delight : 
With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance pleased 
With its own struggles, did I meditate 
On the relation those abstractions bear 
To Nature's laws, and by what process led, 
Those immaterial agents bow their heads 
Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man ; 
From star to star, from sphere to kindred sphere, 
From system on to system without end." 

— The Prelude. 

3. Love of Nature— Appreciative Sympathy.— 

" Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary 
power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in 
nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affec- 
tions and duties, and because of the extraordinary power with 
which, in case after case, he shows us this joy and renders it so 
as to make us share it." — Matthew Arnold. 

" It certainly was a great advance from Pope for a poet to 

have ' an appetite and a passion ' for external nature 

The originality of the 'Lyrical Ballads ' consisted not so much 
in an accurate observation of Nature as in an absolute com- 
munion with her and an interpretation of the spirit of her 
forms. . . . We have here that spiritualization of nature, 
that mysterious sense of the Being pervading the whole uni- 
verse of matter and mind, that feeling of the vital connection 
between all the various forms and kinds of creation. . . . 
Wordsworth's nature grew to its spiritual stature by placing 
his mind in direct contact with natural objects, passively re- 
ceiving their impressions in the still hours of contemplation, 
and bringing his own soul into such sweet relations to the 
soul of nature as to 'see into the life of things.' The poet 



WORDSWORTH 469 

tells us that the forms and colors of nature affected his youth 
with ' dizzy raptures and aching joys ' — that they were to 
him ' as an appetite, and haunted him like a passion.' 
It is by the exercise of this power [the interpretative instinct] 
that he spanned, as he believed, the gulf — deep, wide, and 
bottomless as science makes it — which separates man from 
Nature. Nature's forms interpret him to himself; her sym- 
bols express his subtlest thoughts ; she has correspondences 
for his most soaring aspirations, affinities for his most elevated 
moods, answers for his deepest questionings. She explains to 
him his own significance, and as with arrowy glance he passes 
from grade to grade among the forms of nature, stripping 
from each its accidents till his eye rests on its essential life, 
he grasps her unity in the midst of her diversity ; he sees in 
her wl\at, from analogy to himself, he calls a soul ; he receives 
mystic hints of personality ; he catches flashes from a living 
will akin to his own. . . . He starts from the instinctive 
feeling of childhood, the simple gladness mingled with vague 
fear in the presence of Nature. . . . When instinct be- 
comes reason and impulse principle, when the relationship is 
consciously and intellectually realized, when, that is, Words- 
worth perceives the reciprocal influence which he and Nature 
exercise over each other, these unconscious feelings pass into 
love."— E. P. Whipple. 

" The ideal light which Wordsworth sheds but brings out 
only more vividly the real heart of Nature, the innermost feel- 
ing which is really there, and is recognized by Wordsworth's 
eye in virtue of the kinship between Nature and his own 
soul. . . . He was baptized with an effluence from on 
high, consecrated to be the poet-priest of Nature's mys- 
teries. . . . Even before school-time was past, Nature 
had come to have a meaning and an attraction for him. . . . 
And Wordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the poet, 
has speculated widely and deeply on the relation in which 
Nature stands to the soul of man." — J. C. Shairp. 



4/0 WORDSWORTH 

" He is not, and never can be, the world's poet, but the 
poet of those who love solitude and solitary communion with 
nature. ... In Wordsworth's love, nature is not second 
but first; the poetic rill with him rises in the mountains." 
—T.N. Talfourd. 

" This love of the nature to which he belongs, and which 
is in him the fruit of wisdom and experience, gives to all of his 
poetry a very peculiar, a very endearing, and, at the same 
time, a very lofty character. . . . He tunes his mind to 
nature almost with a feeling of religious obligation." — Pro- 
fessor Wilson [Christopher North]. 

" He very early became aware of that sympathy with exter- 
nal nature which so strongly marked his writings. 
He had early learned to watch and note in her [Nature] that 
to which other eyes were blind." — R. W. Church. 

" The doctrine of the love of nature is generally regarded 
as Wordsworth's great lesson to mankind. . . . There is 
everywhere the sentiment in Wordsworth inspired by his be- 
loved hills. . . . It is not so much the love of nature 
pure and simple as of nature seen through the deepest human 
feeling. ' ' — Leslie Stephen. 

" Wordsworth's feeling for pastoral nature, and the depths 
of sentiment which he can deduce from such scenes and the ' 
lessons of humanity he can read to the heart of man, are things 
in themselves for all time." — R. H. Home. 

" Among the poets who have helped to cultivate this de- 
light in the observation of natural appearances there is none 
that deserves to be ranked before Wordsworth." — David 
Afasson. 

" In the ' Lyrical Ballads ' and the ' Excursion/ Mr. 
Wordsworth appeared as the high-priest of a worship of which 
nature was the idol. . . . No poems have ever indicated 
a more exquisite perception of the beauty of the outer world 
or a more passionate love and reverence for that beauty." — 
Macaulay. 



WORDSWORTH 47 1 

" He shows us, as no other man has done, the beauty, the 
glory, the holiness of Nature. . . . He spiritualizes for us 
the outer world." — Coleridge. 

" He had a human-heartedness about the love he bore to 
objects. . . . He loved rocks and brooks as one angel 
might love another — warm human feelings were connected 
with t hem . ' ' — Siopford Brooke. 

" Wordsworth is as much ravished at the sight of a butter- 
cup at his feet as at the rainbow on the horizon. . . . No 
poet puts the reader so thoroughly in communion with nat- 
ure. . . . He is the poet who has most profoundly felt 
and most powerfully expressed the commerce of the soul with 
Nature. ' ' — Edmond Scherer. 

" He threw himself not at the feet of Nature but straight- 
way and right tenderly on her bosom." — Mrs. Browning. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I saw the spring return, and could rejoice, 
In common with the children of her love, 
Piping on boughs, or sporting on fresh fields, 
Or boldly seeking pleasure nearer heaven 
On wings that navigate cerulean skies. 
So neither were complacency nor peace 
Nor tender yearnings wanting for my good 
Through these distracted times ; in Nature still 
Glorying, I found a counterpoise in her, 
Which, when the spirit of evil reached its height, 
Maintained for me a secret happiness." — The Prelude. 

" Yes, I remember when the changeful earth 
And twice five summers on my mind had stamped 
The faces of the moving year, even then 
I held unconscious intercourse with beauty 
Old as creation, drinking in a pure 
Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths 
Of curling mist, or from the level plain 
Of waters colored by impending clouds. 



472 WORDSWORTH 

Even while mine eye hath moved o'er many a league 
Of shining water, gathering as it seemed 
Through every hair-breadth in that field of light 
New pleasure like a bee among the flowers." 

— The Prelude. 

" I wandered lonely as cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils ; 
Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

" Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 

Along the margin of a bay : 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

" The waves beside them danced ; but they 
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee : 
A poet could not be but gay 

In such a jocund company : 
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 
What wealth to me the show had brought." 

— The Daffodils. 

4. Self-Reflection — Self-Esteem. — " He early con- 
ceived himself to be, and through life was confirmed by cir- 
cumstances in the faith that he was, a 'dedicated spirit,' a 
state of mind likely to further an intense but at the same time 
one-sided development of the intellectual. . . . The same 
mental necessities of a solitary life . . . had made him 
also studious of the movements of his own mind and the mu- 
tual interaction and dependence of the external and the inter- 
nal universe. . . . Wordsworth had that self-trust which 
in the man of genius is sublime and in the man of talent in- 
sufferable. . . . He was the historian of Wordsworth- 



WORDSWORTH 473 

shire. . . . Study and self-culture did much for him, but 
they never quite satisfied him that he was capable of making 
a mistake." — Lowell. 

" Of the transcendent unlimited there was to this critic 
[Wordsworth] probably but one specimen known — Words- 
worth himself. ' ' — David Masson. 

" None of all the great poets was ever so persuaded of his 
capacity to understand and his ability to explain how best 
work was done." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" In Wordsworth we find a personal and a patriotic egoism, 
a pompousness, a self-importance in dwelling upon details that 
have value chiefly for the poet." — John Addington Symonds. 

11 Wordsworth's egoism was of an abstract kind, still it was 
inartistic, a Wordsworthian form of effusiveness." — Edward 
Dow den. 

" He had undoubtedly a high opinion of his own powers 
and performances ; and not only this but also a habit of self- 
study and self-concentration, which kept him talking a good 
deal about himself." — W. M. Rossetti. 

" Wordsworth is a moral critic of men rather than a de- 
lineator of character. When he takes peddlers and potters for 
heroes, they are not those of real life, but peddlers and potters 
after a type in his own imagination. And even then they have 
but little congruity except that which comes from the didactic 
unity of their acts and discourses. Ever aiming at man in the 
simplicity of his nature, all that can be said of his characters 
is that they are not men but man — man after Wordsworth's 
own image." — E. P. Whipple. 

"An intense intellectual egotism swallows up everything. 
All other interests are absorbed in the deeper inter- 
est of his own thoughts, and find the same level." — William 
Hazlitt. 

" He is eminently and humanly expansive, 
spreading his infinite egotism over all the objects of his con- 
templation . ' ' — Mrs. Browning. 



474 WORDSWORTH 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" When, as becomes a man who would prepare 
For such an arduous work, I through myself 
Make rigorous inquisition, the report 
Is often cheering ; for I neither seem 
To lack that first great gift, the vital soul, 
Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
Of elements and agents — under-powers, 
Subordinate helpers of the living mind : 
Nor am I naked of external things, 
Forms, images, nor numerous other aids 
Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil, 
And needful to build up a poet's praise." 

— The Prelude. 

" Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide ; 
The Form remains, the Function never dies; 
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, 
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied 
The elements, must vanish ; — be it so ! 
Enough, if something from our hands have power 
To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; 
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, 
We feel that we are greater than we know." — After- Thought. 

" My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky : 
So was it when my life began ; 
So is it now I am a man ; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 

Or let me die. 
The Child is father of the Man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety." 

— The Rainbow. 

5, Delicate Sense of Sound. — "Wordsworth mastered 
the secret alphabet by which man converses with nature, and 



WORDSWORTH 475 

to his soul she spoke an audible language. Indeed, his ear was 
even more acute than his mind's eye; and no poet has excelled 
him in the subtle perception of the most remote relations of 
tone." — Lowell. 

" Wordsworth is rather a listener than a seer. He hears 
unearthly tones rather than sees unearthly shapes. The vague- 
ness and indistinctness of the impression which the most 
beautiful and sublime passages of his works leave upon the 
mind is similar to that which is conveyed by the most ex- 
quisite music. . . . Few have exceeded him in the 
exquisite delicacy of his sense of sound." — E. P. Whipple. 

" With him metre is but an additional, accessory grace 
on that deeper music of words and sounds. . . . Subtle 
and sharp as he is in the outlining of visible imagery, he is the 
most subtle and delicate of all in the noting of sounds. 
This placid life matured in him an unusual innate 
sensibility to natural sights and sounds. . . . That he 
awakened a ' sort of thought in sense ' is Shelley's just criti- 
cism." — Walter Pater. 

"He has vividly acute senses, and delights in the mere 
physical use of them. . . . The sense of hearing was the 
finest, a biographer states." — P. H. Hutto?i. 

"The music of some few almost incomparable passages 
seems to widen and deepen the capacity of the sense for recep- 
tion of the sublimest harmonies." — A. C. Swinburne. 

"These verses sustain the serious thought by their grave 
harmony, as a motet accompanies meditation or prayer. They 
resemble the grand and monotonous music of the organ." 
— Taine. 

11 Considered as to composition merely, they [Words- 
worth's odes] are perfect ; the music flows on like a stream, 
or rolls like a river, or expands like the sea, according as the 
thought is beautiful or majestic or sublime." — Professor 
Wilson [Christopher North]. 



476 WORDSWORTH 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The sun has long been set, 

The stars are out by twos and threes, 

The little birds are piping yet 

Among the bushes and the trees ; 

There's a cuckoo and one or two thrushes, 

And a far-off wind that rushes, 

And a sound of water that gushes ; 

And the cuckoo's sovereign cry 

Fills all the hollow of the sky. 

Who would ' go parading ' 

In London, and ' masquerading,' 

On such a night of June 

With that beautiful soft half-moon, 

On all these innocent blisses ? 

On such a »ight as this is ! " — Impromptu. 



n 



A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, 
One after one ; the sound of rain and bees 
Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas, 
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ; 
I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie 
Sleepless ; and soon the small birds' melodies 
Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees ; 
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry." — To Sleep. 

" Behold her, single in the field, 
Yon solitary Highland lass ! 
Reaping and singing to herself ; 
Stop here, or gently pass ! 
Alone she cuts and binds the grain 
And sings a melancholy strain. 
Oh listen ! for the vale profound 
Is overflowing with the sound. 

" No nightingale did ever chaunt 
More welcome notes to weary bands 
Of travellers in some shady haunt 
Among Arabian sands ; 



WORDSWORTH 477 

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo bird, 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides." 

— The Solitary Reaper. 

6. Moral Elevation. — " He is a great Christian moral- 
ist and teacher. . . . His gravity and moral aim are Mr. 
Wordsworth's most prevailing characteristics. . . . Words- 
worth is a spiritual singer, a high religious singer, and none 
the less holy because he stands firmly still to reason among 
the tossing of the censers." — R. H. Home. 

" In many poems we find the poet spiritualizing the familiar 
appearances and common facts of earth. . * . The Christian 
view of life and Nature does not at first receive the promi- 
nence which is its due. But under the pressure of sorrow he 
more and more turned to the Christian consolations. . 
He bids his sister ... to look for no consolation from 
earthly sources, but to seek it in that purer faith. 
The sanctifying effect of sorrow on the heroine is, as Words- 
worth himself says, the point on which the whole moral inter- 
est of the poem [' Margaret '] hinges. . . . The .heroine 
knows that her duty is but ' To abide the shock, and finally 
secure o'er grief and pain a triumph pure.' " — J. C. Shairp. 

" He has succeeded in combining his morality with more 
than ordinary beauty of poetical form. . . . It is by 
obedience to the stern law-giver, Duty, that flowers gain their 
fragrance and that the ' inmost ancient heavens ' preserve their 
freshness and strength. . . . Wordsworth's favorite les- 
son is the possibility of turning grief and disappointment to 
account. ... In the ' White Doe of Rylstone ' every- 
thing succeeds so far as it is moral and spiritual." — Leslie 
Stephen. 

"Is it only the matter of the universe which by itself is 
dead ? No, he answered. Matter is animated by a soul, and 
it is this soul that thrills to meet me. . . . For there are 



478 WORDSWORTH 

times when the sense of the spiritual life in Nature becomes so 
dominant that the material world fades away, and we feel as 
if we ourselves were pure spirit. . . . What is it, then, to 
which we speak, with whom we have communion? Not 
with Nature . . . but with the spirit of the God who 
abides as Life in all. All this may not be theological, but it 
is distinctly religious. . . . The religion of Wordsworth 
is the noblest we possess in our poetry, and the healthiest. 
. It is God, then, who unites Nature to us and directs 
her teaching, it is his life acting on ours. A wonderful pict- 
ure — this young and solitary creature living in communion 

with the Being of the World And the action of 

all in Wordsworth's deep religion was to lead him, at last, to 
reach the point marked out for him by God." — Stopford 
Brooke. 

"He is the most spiritual and the most spiritualizing of 
all English poets." — H. N. Hudson. 

" It [Wordsworth's poetry] could have arisen from no mind 
in which moral beauty had not been organized into moral 
character. ... As we pause thoughtfully before some 
of the majestic fabrics of his genius, they seem to wear the 
look of eternity." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His works are nothing else than the celebration of the 
mysteries of this religion." — Edmond Scherer. 

" Rare peculiarities of character assisted him — his keen 
spiritual courage and his stern spiritual frugality." — R. H. 
Hutton. 

" He reads the poems of Wordsworth without understand- 
ing them who does not find in them the noblest incentives to 
faith in man and in the grandeur of his destiny." — Lowell. 

11 In his eyes, what constitutes our worth is the integrity of 
our conscience ; science itself is only profound when it pene- 
trates moral life." — Taine. 



it 



WORDSWORTH 479 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

u Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
England hath need of thee : she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters ; altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; 
Oh, raise us up, return to us again ! 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power." 

— To Milton. 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 

The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar : 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shadows of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows ; 

He sees it in his joy." — Ode on Immortality. 

Blest statesman he, whose mind's unselfish will 

Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts : whose eye 

Sees that, apart from magnanimity, 

Wisdom exists not ; nor the humbler skill 

Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill 

With patient care. What tho' assaults run high, 

They daunt not him who holds his ministry, 

Resolute, at all hazards, to fulfil 

Its duties ; — prompt to move, but firm to wait, — 

Knowing things rashly sought are rarely found. 

That, for the functions of an ancient State — 

Strong by her charters, free because imbound, 

Servant of Providence, not slave of Fate — 

Perilous is sweeping change, all chance unsound." 

— Sonnets to Liberty. 



480 WORDSWORTH 

7. Heaviness — Dulness. — " The one element of great- 
ness which 'The Excursion' possesses is indisputably its 
heaviness. . . . His thought seems often to lean upon a 
word too weak to bear its weight. . . . Even as a 
teacher he is often too much of a pedagogue, and is apt to 
forget that poetry instructs not by precept and inculcation, but 
by hints and indirections and suggestions." — Lowell. 

" Who that values his works most has not felt the intrusion 
there from time to time of something tedious and prosaic ? " 
— Walter Pater. 

" There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in 
certain of the poems. ... In this class I comprise occa- 
sional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying instead of a pro- 
gression of thought. . . . It is the awkwardness and 
strength of Hercules with the distaff of Omphale." — Coleridge. 

" Whatever there may be of interest or pathos in the record 
of Margaret's troubles, is fairly swamped in a watery w r orld of 
words as monotonous and colorless as drizzling mist." — A. C. 
Swinburne. 

"It is easy to find them [his works] oppressive and to com- 
plain of him as heavy and wearisome." — R. W. Church. 

" There are times when this moralizing tendency leads him 
to the regions of the namby-pamby or sheer prosaic plati- 
tude." — Leslie Stephen. 

" When he seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity 
and pomposity." — Matthew Arnold. 

"Wordsworth, the prolific and discursive poet, . . 
expands himself in slow and boundless strides. . . . They 
[his poems] are a little heavy, a little monotonous, and it is 
hard to read them without ennui." — Edmo?id Scherer. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And now, at last, 
From perils manifold, with some small wealth 
Acquired by traffic 'mid the Indian isles, 



WORDSWORTH 48 1 

To his paternal home he is returned, 

With a determined purpose to resume 

The life he had lived there." — The Brothers. 

" The pair, whose infant she was bound to nurse, 
Forbade her all communion with her own : 
Week after week the mandate they enforced, 
— So near ! yet not allowed, upon that sight 
To fix her eyes — alas ! 'twas hard to bear ! 
But worse affliction must be borne — far worse ; 
For 'tis Heaven's will that, after a disease 
Begun and ended within three days' space, 
Her child should die ; as Ellen now exclaimed, 
Her own — deserted child ! — Once, only once, 
She saw it in that mortal malady ; 
And, on the burial day, could scarcely gain 
Permission to attend its obsequies." — The Excursion. 

" The alarm 
Ceased, when she learned through what mishap I came, 
And by what help had gained those distant fields. 
Drawn from her cottage, on that aery height, 
Bearing a lantern in her hand, she stood, 
Or paced the ground — to guide her husband home, 
By that unweary signal kenned afar ; 
An anxious duty ! which the lofty site, 
Traversed but by a few irregular paths, 
Imposes, whensoe'er untoward chance 
Detains him after his accustomed hour." — The Excursion. 

8. Imaginative Power. — "Lastly and pre-eminently I 
challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest 
and strictest sense of the word. . . . Without his depth 
of feeling and his imaginative power, his sense would want 
its vital warmth. ... In imaginative power he stands 
nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton." 
— Coleridge. 

"The imaginative faculty is that with which Wordsworth is 



482 WORDSWORTH 

most eminently gifted. . . . The imagination of Words- 
worth has given to the external universe a charm which has 
never [before] been shed over it." — T. N. Talfourd. 

"The reader will notice that, although the style becomes 
almost transfigured by the intense and brooding imagination, 
the diction is still as simple as prose. . . . It is instinct 
with the most refined and subtle imagination. . . . To 
him belongs the praise of giving its distinctive character to 
the imaginative literature of his age. . . . It is evident 
that the fineness of his imagination requires thought and atten- 
tion to be appreciated. * Peter Bell ' and ' The 
Excursion ' are works replete with elevation of thought and 
grandeur of imagination." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His imagination lends life and feeling to the bare trees, 
peoples the tracts of air. . . . No one has shown the 
same imagination in raising trifles into importance." — Will- 
iam Hazlitt. 

" None but Wordsworth has ever so completely transmuted 
by an imaginative spirit unsatisfied yearnings into eternal 
truths." — R. H. Hutton. 

" His imagination was a treasure-house whence he drew 
forth things new and old, the old as fresh as the new." — 
J. C. Shairp. 

" He hates science because it regards facts without the 
imaginative coloring." — Leslie Stephen. 

" Every page of his poetry abounds with instances of im- 
agination." — David Masson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" A few are near him still — and now the sky, 
He hath it to himself — 'tis all his own. 
O most ambitious Star ! an inquest wrought 
Within me when I recognized thy light ; 
A moment 1 was startled at the sight : 
And, while I gazed, there came to me a thought 



WORDSWORTH 483 

That I might step beyond my natural race 

As thou seem'st now to do ; might one day trace 

Some ground not mine ; and, strong her strength above, 

My Soul, an apparition in the place, 

Tread there with steps which no one shall reprove." 

— Lines on Revisiting Tint em Abbey. 

" O Nightingale ! thou surely art 
A creature of a ' fiery heart : ' — 
These notes of thine — they pierce and pierce ; 
Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! 
Thou sing'st as if the God of wine 
Had helped thee to a valentine ; 
A song in mockery and despite 
Of shades and dews and silent night 
And steady bliss and all the loves 
Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.'* 

— The Simplon Pass. 

" Then up I rose, 
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash 
And merciless ravage : and the shady nook 
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, 
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up 
Their quiet being : and, unless I now 
Confound my present feelings with the past, 
Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, 
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 
The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky. — 
Then, dearest maiden, move along these shades 
In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods." — Nutting. 

9. Sympathy with Humanity. " As the poet of suffer- 
ing and of sympathy with suffering, his station is unequalled 
in its kind. . . . Wordsworth at his best is sublime by 
the very force of his tenderness. . . . May his immortal 
words of sympathy find immortal application to himself." 
— A. C. Swinburne. 



484 WORDSWORTH 

" The chief characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry consists 
in the profound insight, wide sympathy, and vital force with 
which it presents us to the human nature. . . . Words- 
worth's poems are profound illustrations of the ' Humanities.' 
It is the broad rough life of man that confronts us, not the 
life of the sentimentalist." — Aubrey De Vere. 

11 It was here [at Hawkshead in Lancashire] that Words- 
worth learned that homely humanity which gives such depth 
and sincerity to his poems. . . . Nothing could obliter- 
ate the deep trace of that early training which enables him to 
speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. . . . He 
has won for himself a secure immortality ... by a 
homely sincerity of human sympathy which reaches the hum- 
blest heart. ' ' — Lowell. 

"It was in this free pastoral life that the roots of 
Wordsworth's love for man struck deep. . . . He was 
able ... to grasp the higher view of manhood and to 
love mankind. . . . He had compassion on the im- 
moral. He saw in the idiots those whose life was hidden 
in God. ... In wrath and pity he threw himself into 
the cause of distressed nationality. . . . This was his 
work, to make unworldly men listen to the beating of the 
heart of natural humanity. . . . He wrote with a view 
to show that men who do not wear fine clothes may feel 
deeply." — Stopford Brooke. 

" His poetry meets the want of actual life — consolation, 
help, sympathy. ... In this intense spiritualism, mingled 
with the mildest and sweetest humanity, we see the . 
power of Wordsworth. . . . They [his poems] will exert 
a vast influence upon society through the diffusion of just and 
beautiful sentiments of benevolence and charity. 
Mercy, justice, wisdom, piety, love, freedom, in their full 
beauty and grandeur are the subjects of his song ; and we 
have yet to learn that these can subsist with the slightest in- 
jury done to a human being." — E. P. Whipple. 



WORDSWORTH 485 

" The lower a being is in the scale, the more he labors to 
awaken our sympathy in its favor. . . . The experience 
of life opens the heart to a kind of affection for all created 
things. ' ' — Edmond Scherer. 

"To console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by 
making the happy happier, this was his purpose." — R. W. 
Church. 

"Wordsworth is a feeling man ; ... he knows grief 
by sympathy rather than by suffering. " — Mrs. Browning. 

" One will be struck with the author's knowledge of the 
human heart and the power he possesses of stirring up its deep- 
est and gentlest sympathies." — Francis Jeffrey. 

" He sees nothing loftier than human hopes, nothing deeper 
than the human heart." — William Hazlitt. 

"It is the superior depth of genuine sincerity and truth in 
Wordsworth's humanity that renders his poems indestructi- 
ble." — John Addington Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Unoccupied by sorrow of its own, 

His heart lay open ; and by Nature tuned 

And constant disposition of his thoughts 

To sympathy with man, he was alive 

To all that was enjoyed, where'er he went, 

And all that was endured ; for in himself 

Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness, 

He had no painful pressure from without 

That made him turn about from wretchedness 

With coward fears. He could afford to suffer 

With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it came 

That in our best experience he was rich 

And in the wisdom of our daily life." — The Excursion. 

" Heart-pleased we smile upon the bird 
If seen, and with like pleasure stirred 
Commend him, when he's only heard. 



486 WORDSWORTH 

But small and fugitive our gain 

Compared with hers who long hath lain, 

With languid limbs and patient head, 

Reposing on a lone sick bed ; 

Where now she daily hears a strain 

That cheats her of too busy cares, 

Eases her pain, and helps her prayers ; 

And who but this dear bird beguiled 

The fever of that pale-faced child ; 

Now cooling, with his passing wing, 

Her forehead, like a breeze of spring : 

Recalling now, with descant soft, 

Shed round her pillow from aloft, 

Sweet thoughts of angels hovering nigh 

And the invisible sympathy 

Of ' Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, 

Blessing the bed she lies upon ? ' " — The Redbreast. 



(i 



Glad sight wherever new with old 

Is joined through some dear home-born tie ; 
The life of all that we behold 

Depends upon that mystery. 
Vain is the glory of the sky, 

The beauty vain of field and grove, 
Unless, while with admiring eye 

We gaze, we also learn to love." — To a Lady. 

io. Early Puerility — Exaggeration of the Triv- 
ial. — This characteristic is one for which Wordsworth has 
been severely and sometimes justly criticised. 

" Wordsworth's true simplicity, the simplicity which came 
from writing close to the truth of things and making the word 
rise out of the idea conceived, cannot be too highly com- 
mended ; but in respect to his false simplicity for the sake of 
being simple, we can only say that it has given some point to 
the sarcasm, ' that Chaucer writes like a child but Words- 
worth writes childishly.' . . . The occasional puerilities 
of expression in his early poems are not sufficient to break the 
charm they exert on susceptible minds." — E. P. Whipple. 



WORDSWORTH 487 

" Work altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat, and 
dull, is produced by him with evident unconsciousness of its 
depths, and he presents it to us with the same faith and assur- 
ance as his best work." — Matthew Arnold. 

" His taste for simplicity is evinced by sprinkling up and 
down his interminable declamations a few descriptions of 
baby-houses and of old hats and wet brims." — Francis Jeffrey . 

" Half of his pieces are childish, almost foolish. 
All the poets in the world could not reconcile us to so much 
tedium. . . . This sentimental prettiness quickly grows 
insipid, and the style by its factitious simplicity renders it 
still more insipid." — Taine. 

" His simplicity is not infrequently childish ; his calmness, 
stagnation; his pathos, puerility." — If. T. Tuckerman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And he is lean and he is sick : 
His body, dwindled and awry, 
Rests upon ankles swollen and thick ; 
His legs are thin and dry ; 

" Few months of life he has in store, 
As he to you will tell, 
For still, the more he works, the more 
Do his weak ankles swell." — Simon Lee. 

'* There's George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore, 
Three rosy-cheeked school-boys, the highest not more 
Than the height of a counsellor's bag ; 
To the top of Great How did it please them to climb, 
And there they built up, without mortar or lime, 
A man on the peak of the crag. 

" They built him of stones gathered up as they lay : 
Thy built him and christened him all in one day, 
An urchin both vigorous and hale ; 
And so without scruple they called him Ralph Jones." 

— Rural Architecture. 



488 WORDSWORTH 

" All, all is silent — rocks and woods 
All still and silent — far and near ! 
Only the ass, with motion dull, 
Upon the pivot of his skull 
Turns round his long left ear. 

Upon the beast the sapling rings ; 

His lank sides heaved, his limbs they stirred ; 

He gave a groan, and then another, 

Of that which went before the brother, 

And then he gave a third." — Peter Bell. 

ii. Freshness — Originality. — "Wordsworth is the 
most original poet now [1830] living. . . . His poetry 
is not external but internal ; it does not depend upon tradition 
or story or old song ; he furnishes it from his own mind and 
is his own subject." — William Hazlitt. 

" The choice of his characters from humble and rustic life 
was caused partly from the original make of his nature. 
He was the first who both in theory and in practice 
shook off the trammels of the so-called poetic diction which 
had tyrannized over English poetry for more than a century. 
What contemporary poet has left to his country such 
a gallery of new and individual portraits as a permanent pos- 
session?" — J. C. Shairp. 

" There is no poet who gives to his poems so perfectly a 
new birth as Wordsworth. ... In his poems there will 
ever be a spring of something even fresher than poetic life — a 
pure, deep well of solitary joy." — R. H. Hutton. 

11 How pure and fresh his poetry is ! how healthy and nat- 
ural, but how true to Nature and how near to God ! " — Stop- 
ford Brooke. 

" No frequency of perusal can deprive his poems of their 
freshness. ' The River Duddon ' is singularly pure in style 
and fresh in conception. . . . This atmosphere is some- 
times sparklingly clear, as if the air and dew and sunshine of a 



WORDSWORTH 489 

May morning had found a home in his imagination." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

" Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his 
hand and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrat- 
ing power. . . . He can and will treat a subject with 
nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere natural- 
ness. ' ' — Matthew Arnold. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Up with me ! up with me, into the clouds : 
For thy song, Lark, is strong ; 
Up with me, up with me, into the clouds ! 
Singing, singing, 

With clouds and sky about thee ringing, 
Lift me, guide me, till I find 
That spot that seems so to thy mind." 

— To a Sky-Lark. 

" O blithe new-comer ! I have heard, 
I hear thee and rejoice. 
O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird, 
Or but a wandering voice ? 

" While I am lying on the grass 
Thy twofold shout I hear ; 
From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
At once far off and near. 

" Though bubbling only to the vale, 
Of sunshine and of flowers, 
Thou bringest unto me a tale 
Of visionary hours. 

" Thrice welcome, darling of the spring ! 
Even yet thou art to me 
No bird, but an invisible thing, 

A voice, a mystery." — To the Cuckoo. 

" Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 
Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 
With brightest sunshine round me spread 



490 WORDSWORTH 

Of spring's unclouded weather, 
In this sequestered nook how sweet 
To sit upon my orchard seat ! 
And birds and flowers once more to greet, 

My last year's friends together." 

— The Green Linnet. 

12. Pathos. — " To many ' The Excursion ' will always 
be dear for the pictures of mountain scenes and the pa- 
thetic records of rural life which it contains. 
For feelings, not on the surface but in the depth, pathos 
pure and profound, what of modern verse can equal this 
story ['The Excursion'] and that of Margaret?" — J. C. 
Shairp. 

" The most especial and distinctive quality of his genius is 
rather its pathetic than its meditative note." — A. C. Swin- 
burne. 

" He sees images in his own words of man suffering amid 
awful forms and powers. . . . He is the true forerunner 
of the deepest and most passionate poetry of our own day." — 
Walter Pater. 

" Nothing can exceed the pathos with which Wordsworth 
can tell these simple local stories." — David Masson. 

" To me the pathos of Wordsworth is like the sweetness of 
Michael Angelo. As the sweetness of Michael Angelo is 
sweeter than that of other men because of his strength, so the 
pathos of Wordsworth is the more moving because of the calm- 
ness and reserve with which it is clothed. ... In mild 
and philosophic pathos Wordsworth seems to me without a 
compeer. ' ' — Coleridge. 

" The still, searching pathos of ' We Are Seven' . . . 
indicates a vision into the deepest sources of emotion." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

11 No one has displayed the same pathos in treating of the 
simplest feelings of the heart." — William Hazlitt. 

" In 'We Are Seven/ indeed, the pathos overcomes the 



WORDSWORTH 49I 

quaint familiarity of style, and embodies the touching senti- 
ment with irresistible effect. . . . He showed with Burns 
how far deep down the pathetic and the tender go in life." — 
R. W. Church. 

"We often meet in his works little passages in which we 
seem almost to contemplate the well-spring of pure emotion 
and gentle pathos. . . . No [other] poet has done such 
justice to the depth and fulness of maternal love." — T. N. 
Talfourd. 

" In this poem [" Margaret "] there is a profound pathos 
swelling in volume to the end. . . . Pathos is a charac- 
teristic of nearly all of Wordsworth's poems, but the tears 
which it brings to the eyes are often those of gladness mingled 
with regret." — Aubrey De Vere. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thus they were calmed 
And cheered ; and now together breathe fresh air 
In open fields ; and when the glare of day 
Is gone, and twilight to the mother's wish 
Befriends the observance, readily they join 
In walks whose boundary is the lost one's grave, 
Which he with flowers hath planted, finding there 
Amusement, where the Mother does not miss 
Dear consolation, kneeling on the turf 
In prayer, yet blending with that solemn rite 
Of pious faith the vanities of grief ; 
For such, by pitying angels and by spirits 
Transferred to regions upon which the clouds 
Of our weak nature rest not, must be deemed 
Those willing tears and unforbidden sighs, 
And all those tokens of a cherished sorrow, 
Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven 
As now it is, seems to her own fond heart 
Immortal as the love that gave it being." 

— Maternal Grief. 



492 WORDSWORTH 

'* Alas ! the fowls of heaven have wings, 

And blasts of heaven will aid their flight ; 

They mount — how short a voyage brings 
The wanderers back to their delight ! 

Chains tie us down by land and sea ; 

And wishes, vain as mine, may be 

All that is left to comfort thee. 



a 



Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan, 
Maimed, mangled by inhuman men ; 

Or thou upon a desert thrown 
Inheritest the lion's den ; 

Or hast been summoned to the deep, 

Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep 

An incommunicable sleep. 

" Beyond participation lie 

My troubles, and beyond relief: 
If any chance to heave a sigh, 

They pity me and not my grief. 
Then come to me, my Son, or send 
Some tidings, that my woes may end : 
I have no other earthly friend." 

— The Affliction of Margaret. 

" Unblest distinction ! showered on me 
To bind a lingering life in chains : 

All that could quit my grasp, or flee, 
Is gone ; — but not the subtle stains 

Fixed in the spirit ; for even here 

Can I be proud that jealous fear 
Of what I was remains. 

" A woman rules my prison's key ; 
A sister Queen, against the bent 
Of law and holiest sympathy, 

Detains me, doubtful of the event ; 
Great God, who feel'st for my distress, 
My thoughts are all that I possess ; 
Oh keep them innocent ! " 

— Lament of Mary Queen of Scots. 



WORDSWORTH 493 

13. Didacticism. — "To teach the young and the gra- 
cious of every age to see, to think, and to feel . . . this 
is his own account of the purpose of his poetry. 
' Every great poet,' he said, ' is a teacher; I wish either to 
be considered as a teacher or as nothing.' " — R. W. Church. 

" In what high vein can he write in whom the spirit of 
prophecy is replaced by the spirit of mere teaching ? 
He wrote to impress the world with a sense of their [the 
poor] dignity in suffering and the moral grandeur of their 
honest poverty." — Stopford Brooke. 

" His habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest 
incidents of his walks passes into a didactic mania." — Ed- 
mond Scherer. 

" Every little lyric ... is organically connected 
with the long narrative and didactive poems." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

" He saw a grandeur, a beauty, a teaching in trivial events. 
In short, the poem [" The Excursion "] is as grave 
and dull as a sermon." — Taine. 

" He does actually convey to the reader an extraordinary 
wisdom in the things of practice." — Walter Pater. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

M There are in our existence spots of time, 
That with distinct pre-eminence retain 
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed 
By false opinion and contentious thought, 
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, 
In trivial occupations, and the round 
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds 
Are nourished and invisibly repaired ; 
A virtue by which pleasure is enhanced, 
That penetrates, enables us to mount, 
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen." 

— The Prelude. 



494 WORDSWORTH 



u 



(( 



A piteous lot were it to flee from man — 

Yet not rejoice in nature. He whose hours 

Are by domestic pleasures uncaressed 

And unenlivened ; who exists whole years 

Apart from benefits received or done 

'Mid the transactions of the bustling crowd ; 

Who neither hears nor feels a wish to hear 

Of the world's interests — such a one hath need 

Of a quick fancy and an active heart, 

That, for the day's consumption, books may yield 

Food not unwholesome ; earth and air correct 

His morbid humor, with delight supplied 

Or solace, varying as the seasons change." 

— The Excursion. 

Fit retribution, by the moral code 

Determined, lies beyond the State's embrace ; 

Yet, as she may, for each peculiar case 

She plants well-measured terrors in the road 

Of wrongful acts. Downward it is and broad, 

And, the main fear once doomed to banishment, 

Far oftener then, bad ushering worse event, 

Blood would be spilt that in his dark abode 

Crime might lie better hid. And, should the change 

Take from the horror due to a foul deed, 

Pursuit and evidence so far must fail, 

And, guilt escaping, passion then might plead 

In angry spirits for her old free range, 

And the ' wild justice of revenge' prevail." 

— Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death. 

14. Grandeur — Stateliness — Serenity. — " Words- 
worth walks, . . . though he limps at times, with almost 
as stately a step as Milton. ... I cannot but think that 
the element of grandeur of style . . . flowed largely 
from the solemn simplicity. . . . The power which in 
Nature . . . made her hours of calm, produced calm in 
him, and a certain love of calm in himself strengthened the 
impression. . . . He felt the loveliness and calm in the 



WORDSWORTH 495 

world as similar to moral loveliness and calm, and as age grew 
on, his calmness deepened." — Stopford Brooke. 

* ' In ' The Excursion ' we forget the poverty of the getting 
up to admire the purity and elevation of the thought. 
This book is like a Protestant temple, august, though bare and 
monotonous. . . . They [his stanzas] resemble the grand 
monotonous music of the organ." — Taine. 

"A dream which reaches the ne plus ultra of sublimity 
expressly framed to illustrate the eternity. 
No describer so powerful or idealizing so magnificently what 
he deals with, has been a spectator of parallel scenes." — De 
Qui?icey. 

" He clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur. 
His mind seemed embued with the majesty and solemnity of 
the objects around him." — William Hazlitt. 

" His diction never in his best works is deficient in splendor 
and compass. ... In this faculty of awakening senti- 
ments of grandeur, sublimity, beauty, affection, devotion, 
it would be difficult to find a parallel to Words- 
worth. . . . He is above the tempests and turbulence of 
life, and moves in regions where serenity is strength." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Serene will be our days and bright, 
And happy will our nature be, 
When love is an unerring light, 
And joy its own security. 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Even now, who, not unwisely bold, 
Live in the spirit of this creed ; 
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need." 

— Ode to Duty, 

" Child of the clouds! remote from every taint 
Of sordid industry thy lot is cast ; 
Thine are the honors of the lofty waste ; 
Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint, 



496 WORDSWORTH 

Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissues quaint 
Thy cradle decks ; — to chant thy birth, thou hast 
No meaner poet than the whistling Blast, 
And Desolation is thy Patron-saint ! " 

— The River Duddon. 

" Child of loud-throated War ! the mountain stream 
Roars in thy hearing ; but thy hour of rest 
Is come, and thou art silent in thy age ; 
Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught 
Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs. 
Oh ! there is life that breathes not ; powers there are 
That touch each other to the quick in modes 
Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, 
No soul to dream of." — Address to Kilchurn Castle. 



EMERSON, 1803-1882 

Biographical Outline. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, born 
in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803, the second of five sons; 
father pastor of the "First Church" (Congregational) of 
Boston; Emerson enters the public grammar school in 181 1 
and the Boston Latin School soon afterward ; at the age of 
eleven (18 14) he is translating Virgil into English verse ; he is 
fond, also, of Greek, history, and poetry ; he composes verses, 
and thinks highly of " the idle books under the bench at the 
Latin School; " he enters Harvard College in 18 18, and is 
graduated in 182 1 ; he receives second prize for English com- 
position in his Senior year, but gives little evidence of remark- 
able ability while in college; he joins his brother William in 
conducting a private school at Boston, and later serves as 
principal of an "Academy" at Chelmsford, now a part of 
Lowell ; later he has a private school at Cambridge. 

In 1823 he begins studying for the ministry under Dr. 
Channing, afterward taking a course of lectures at the Har- 
vard Divinity School ; owing to trouble with his eyes, he 
takes no notes at the Divinity School, and is excused from the 
examinations; Emerson wrote later, "If they had examined 
me, they probably would not have let me preach at all ; " 
in 1826 he is "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex 
Association of Ministers ; he visits South Carolina and Florida 
during the winter of 1827-28, and preaches several times at 
Charleston and other places ; returning, he preaches temporar- 
ily in several New England towns; in March, 1829, he is 
ordained colleague of Dr. Ware in the " Second Church " of 
Boston; in September, 1829, he marries Ellen Louisa 
Tucker, who dies of consumption in February, 1832; in 
32 497 



49§ EMERSON 

September, 1832, he preaches his famous sermon on the 
Lord's Supper, expressing his scruples against administering 
the same and announcing his intention, therefore, to resign 
his office. 

He visits Europe in 1833, making a tour of Sicily, Italy, 
France, and England, and meeting Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
Landor, De Quincey, and Carlyle ; he becomes a resident of 
Concord in the summer of 1834, first occupying the "Old 
Manse" of Hawthorne's novel; he begins lecturing in the 
winter of 1833-34, giving three lectures treating of his Eu- 
ropean experiences and two, respectively, on " Water" and 
"The Relation of Man to the Globe;" during 1834 he 
lectures on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, 
and Burke ; the first two of these lectures were published in 
the North American Review for 1837-38 ; Emerson begins, 
in May, 1834, his correspondence with Carlyle, which lasts 
till 1872 ; in September, 1835, ne marries Lydia Jackson, of 
Plymouth, Mass.; during 1835 he gives ten lectures in Bos- 
ton on "English Literature;" in 1836, twelve lectures on 
"The Philosophy of History;" in 1837, ten lectures on 
"Human Culture;" in April, 1836, he writes his great 
"Commemoration Ode;" till 1838 he preaches frequently 
as a "supply" at East Lexington, Mass.; he lectures on 
"War" in 1837, and publishes anonymously in 1836 his 
small book entitled "Nature," which Holmes calls "a re- 
flective prose poem;" in August, 1837, he delivers his Phi 
Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge, entitled "The American 
Scholar;" on July 15, 1838, he delivers at Cambridge his 
Divinity School Address, which excites severe criticism by 
theologians and raises Emerson " to the importance of a here- 
tic ; " in 1838-39 he gives ten lectures on "Human Life," 
of which these titles — "Love," "Demonology," and "The 
Comic " — remain in his published works ; he contributes, dur- 
ing 1838 and 1839, the poems entitled "The Humble Bee " 
and ' ' To the Rhodora ' ' to the Western Messenger (both 



EMERSON 499 

poems written about 1823); in July, 1838, he lectures on 
"Literary Ethics " at Dartmouth College; in December, 
1838, Emerson writes to Carlyle that he has $22,000 draw- 
ing six per cent, interest, besides his house, his two-acre lot, 
and an income of $800 from his lectures; in August, 1841, 
he lectures at Waterville, Me., on " The Method of Nature ; " 
writing to Carlyle about this time, Emerson calls himself 
" an incorrigible spouting Yankee." 

From 1840 to 1844 he contributes more than thirty arti- 
cles, including some of his best poems, to the Dial, first 
edited by Margaret Fuller, and later (1842-44) by Emerson 
himself; during 1841 he delivers, also, his lectures on "Man 
the Reformer," "The Times," "The Transcendentalist," 
and "The Conservative;" he publishes, during 1 841, his 
first volume of collected essays, including those on History, 
Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friend- 
ship, Prudence, Heroism, the Over-Soul, Circles, and Art; 
in February, 1842, he loses his only son, then five years old, 
whom he mourns to Carlyle as " a piece of love and sunshine 
well worth my watching from morning to night," and writes 
" A Threnody " in memory of his lost child ; he delivers his 
address on " The Young American " in February, 1844, and 
publishes, during the same year, the second volume of his 
essays; he lectures also on "New England Reformers" dur- 
ing 1844, and publishes the first volume of his poems in 1846 ; 
he sails a second time for Europe October 5, 1847 ; after 
spending a week with Carlyle, Emerson begins a lecture tour, 
arranged for him by the Rev. Alexander Ireland ; while lect- 
uring in Edinburgh he meets Leigh Hunt, De Quincey, and 
many other notabilities; he visits Paris before returning to 
America; in 1850 he publishes selections from his English 
lectures under the title " Representative Men ; " during 1855 
he delivers anti-slavery addresses in New York and Boston, 
favoring the purchase of the slaves by the Government, and 
also supports female suffrage in an address before the Woman's, 



500 EMERSON 

Rights Convention ; in 1856 he publishes " English Traits; " 
in 1857 he begins to contribute to the Atlantic Monthly, then 
just established, and continues till his twenty-eighth article ; 
he helps to found the famous " Saturday Club," which in- 
cludes Hawthorne, Motley, Dana, Lowell, Whipple, Agassiz, 
Holmes, Longfellow, and others; during 1858 he publishes 
his essay on Persian Poetry. 

In 1859 Emerson makes his greatest public speech — at the 
Burns Festival in Boston ; in i860 he publishes the " Conduct 
of Life ; " in 1862 he delivers his funeral address over Tho- 
reau and his Address on the Emancipation Proclamation ; 
during 1863 he publishes "The Boston Hymn," "Volun- 
taries," and many other poems; during 1866 he writes 
"Terminus," one of his noblest poems; during 1868, 1869, 
and 1870 he lectures at Harvard University on " The Natural 
History of the Intellect ; " in 1870 he publishes " Society and 
Solitude; " during 1871 he visits California in company with 
Professor J. B. Thayer, who afterward published an account 
of the journey ; Emerson loses a part of his house and many 
valuable papers by fire in July, 1872 ; he sails the third time 
for Europe in October, 1872, in company with his daughter 
Ellen, going as far as Egypt ; during his absence friends sub- 
scribe $11,620 for the rebuilding of his house; he returns to 
Concord in May, 1873, and is greeted with a popular ova- 
tion ; in 1874 he publishes " Parnassus," a collection of 
poems from British and American authors; during the same 
year he is nominated Lord Rector of the University of Glas- 
gow, and receives five hundred votes against seven hundred 
for Disraeli, which he calls "quite the fairest laurel that has 
ever fallen on me; " in April, 1875, he delivers an address 
at Concord on the one hundredth anniversary of "the fight 
at the bridge; " before the shock of the fire in 1872 his men- 
tal powers, especially his memory, began to show signs of 
failure ; in March, 1878, he lectures in the Old South Church 
at Boston on " Fortune of the Republic ; " in May, 1879, he 



EMERSON 50I 

lectures at Harvard University on "The Preacher;" in 1881 
he reads before the Massachusetts Historical Society a paper 
on Carlyle ; in February, 1882, he publishes in the Century 
an article on " Superlatives; " he dies at Concord, April 27, 
1882. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EMERSON'S STYLE. 

Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 59-68 

and 234-259. 
Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 77-90. 
Sanborn, F. B., "The Genius and Character of Emerson." Boston, 

1885, Osgood, 1-425. 
Whipple, E. P., "Recollections." Boston, 1878, Ticknor, 119-154. 
Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1: 

349-361. 
Arnold, M., "Discourses in America." London, 1885, Macmillan, 

138-207. 
Morley, J., "Critical Miscellanies." New York, 1893, Macmillan, 1: 

293-346. 
Powell, T., "The Living Authors of America." New York, 1850, 

Stringer, 49-77. 
Welsh, A. H., " Development of English Literature." Chicago, 1882, 

Griggs, 2 : 523-542. 
Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 

1 = 330-371 and 2: 137-172. 
Birrell, A., " Obiter Dicta." New York, 1887, Scribner, 2: 238-256. 
Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1851-52, J. Hogg, 1: 

195-208; 2: 120-135; 3: 328-336. 
Grimm, H., "Literature." Boston, 1886, Cupples, Upham & Co., 

1-44. 
Burroughs, J., "Indoor Studies." Boston, J893, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 128-162. 
Conway, M. D., "Emerson at Home and Abroad." Boston, 1882, 

Osgood, 1-383. 
Alcott, A. B., "Ralph Waldo Emerson," etc. Boston, 1882, Cupples, 

Upham & Co., 1-56. 
Woodbury, C. R., "Talks with Emerson." New York, 1890, Baker 

& Taylor, 1— 177. 
James, H., " Partial Portraits." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 1-34. 



502 EMERSON 

Guernsey, A. H , '"Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Poet." 

New York, 1881, Appleton, 1-327. 
Hawthorne, J., " Confessions and Criticisms. " Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 

186-217. 
Walsh, W. S. (Shepard), "Pen Pictures of Modern Authors." New 

York, 1886, Putnam, 86-98. 
Dana, W. F., "The Optimism of Emerson." Boston, 1886, Cupples, 

Upham & Co., 1-64. 
Bungay, G. W., " Off- Hand Takings." New York, 1854, Dewitt, 

119-127. 
Nichol, J., "American Literature." Edinburgh, 1882, Black, 254-321. 
Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes," etc. New York, 1885, Crowell, 

284- 288. 
Garnet, R. (Robertson), " Great Writers " (Emerson). New York, 1888, 

Whitaker. 
Friswell, J. H., "Modern Men of Letters." London, 1870, Hodder 

& Stoughton, 333-342. 
Frothingham, O. B., "Transcendentalism in New England." New 

York, 1876, Putnam, 218-249. 
Hunt, T. W., "Studies in Literature and Style." New York, 1890, 

Armstrong, 246-279. 
Willis, N. P., " Hurrygraphs." Rochester, New York, 1853, Alden 

Beardsly Co., 169-179. 
Scudder, H. E., " Men and Letters." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 147-171. 
Robertson, J. M., "Modern Humanists." London, 1891, Swan, Son- 

nenschein & Co., 1 12-137. 
North British Review, 47 : 319-358 (Editor). 
Christian Examiner, 30: 253-262(00 Felton); 38: 87-106 (F. H. 

Hedge); 48: 314-318 (C. A. Bartol). 
North American Review, 136: 431-446 (E. P. Whipple); 130: 479-499 

(F. H. Underwood); 70: 520-524 (C. E. Norton); 70: 520-525 

(C. E. Norton); 140: 129-144 (Geo. Bancroft). 
The Century Magazine, 25 : 875-886 (E. C. Stedman) ; 5 : 925-932 

(Burroughs); 4: 265-272 (H. James, Jr.). 
The Chaataiiquan, 17: 687-692 (J. V. Cheney). 
The Nation, 34: 375~377(T. W. Higginson) ; 40: 99-101 (T. W. Hig- 

ginson). 
The Arena^ 10: 736-745 (W. H. Savage). 
Harper's Magazine \ 52: 417-420 (E. P. Whipple); 68: 457-468 (Annie 

Fields); 65: 278-281 (J. Hawthorne); 65: 576-587 (E. P. Whip- 
ple). 



EMERSON 503 

Scribner's Monthly, 17: 496-512 (F. B. Sanborn). 

Literary World, 11 : 175-176 (T. W. Higginson) and 174-185, obse- 
quies (several authors). 
Methodist Quarterly Review, 34: 357-374 (Geo. Prentice). 
British Quarterly Review, II: 281-315 (J. Chapman). 
TaiCs Magazine, 15: 17-23 (G. Gilfillan). 
People's Journal, 4: 305-15 (Parke Godwin). 
Critic, I : 330 (W. Whitman); 2 : 140 (J. Burroughs). 
Athenceum, 1883, I : 335 (Whipple). 
Overland Monthly, n. s., 4: 434 (E. R. Sill). 
Good Words, 28 : 807 (F. H. Underwood). 
Poet Lore, 1 : 253 (W. L. Harris). 
Dial (Chicago), 10: 49-51 (O. F. Emerson). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Optimism — Serenity — Wholesomeness. — 

"Emerson's sympathetic benevolence comes from what he 
calls his ' persistent optimism.' . . . Never had man such 
a sense of the inexhaustibleness of nature and such hope. 
Happiness in labor — rightness and veracity in all the life of 
the spirit, happiness and eternal hope — that was Emerson's 
gospel. . . . His persistent optimism is the root of his 
greatness and the source of his charm. . . . Strong as 
was Emerson's optimism, and unconquerable as was his be- 
lief in a good result to emerge from all which he saw going 
on around him, no misanthropical satirist ever saw short- 
comings and absurdities more clearly than he did, or exposed 
them more courageously. . . . Truly, his insight is ad- 
mirable, his truth is precious; yet the secret of his effect is 
not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, 
serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are 
indissolubly joined ; in which they work, and have their 
being." — Matthetu Arnold. 

" Emerson looked serenely at the ugly aspect of contem- 
porary life because, as an optimist, he was a herald of the 
future. . . . Carlyle, as a pessimist, denounced the pres- 



504 EMERSON 

ent, and threw all the energy of his vivid dramatic genius into 
vitalizing the past. He [Emerson] declared, even when 
current events appeared ugliest to the philanthropist, that 
' the highest thought and the deepest love is born with Vic- 
tory at its head.' " — E. P. Whipple. 

" He was an optimist with reverent intent. It was in vain 
to ask him to assert what he did not know, to avow a creed 
founded upon his hopes. . . . He looked upon nature 
as pregnant with soul ; for him the spirit always moved upon 
the face of the waters. The incomprehensible plan was per- 
fect. Whatever is, is right." — E. C. Stedman. 

" He had faith that the goodness and wisdom of humanity 
would, in the long run, prove to be more than equal to the 
goodness and wisdom of any possible man ; and that men 
would govern themselves more nobly and successfully than 
any individual monarch could govern them. . . . He is 
the champion of the Republic ; he is our future living in our 
present and showing the world, by anticipation, what sort of 
excellence we are capable of." — Julian Hawthorne. 

" 'Tis everything to have a true believer in the world, 
dealing with men and women as if they were divine in idea 
and real in fact ; meeting persons and events at a glance 
directly, not at a million removes, and so passing fair and 
fresh into life and literature the delights and ornaments of 
the race." — A. B. Alcott 

" He was an optimist, always full of hope, finding sky-born 
music in everything and a power in nature to lift better up to 
best." — George Bancroft. 

11 The greatness of his work consists in the measure of 
pure genius and of inspiration to noble and heroic conduct 
which it holds. Asa writer he had but one aim, namely, to 
inspire, to wake up his reader or hearer to the noblest and the 
highest that there was in him. . . . He was to scatter the 
seed-germs of nobler thinking and living. . . . In Emer- 
son more than in any other there are words that are like 



EMERSON 505 

banners leading to victory, symbolical, inspiring, rallying, 
seconding, and pointing the way to our best endeavor. 
His mind acts like a sun lens in gathering the cold pale beams 
of that luminary to a focus which warms and stimulates the 
reader in a surprising manner." — John Burroughs. 

" In all he is the optimist rather than the pessimist, the 
philosopher, not the mere by-stander. . . . He wrote 
to Carlyle, ' My whole philosophy, which is very real, teaches 
acquiescence and optimism.' He was an optimist, a serene 
presence, unexcited because confident of the ultimate result. 
Though bitterly attacked, he seldom retorted and seldom 
swerved from his self-confident course." — C. J?. Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
And all that Nature made thy own, 
Floating in air or pent in stone, 
Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
And, like thy shadow, follow thee." 

— Compensation, 

'* Yet spake yon purple mountain, 
Yet said yon ancient wood, 
That Night or Day, that Love or Crime, 
Leads all souls to the good." — The Park. 

" How much, preventing God, how much I owe 
To the defences thou hast round me set ; 
Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, — 

These scorned bondsmen were my parapet." — Grace. 

2. Moral Elevation. — " That he speaks always to what 
is highest and what is least selfish in us, few Americans of the 
generation younger than his own would be disposed to deny." 
— Lowell. 

"He lives in the highest atmosphere of thought. . . 
He is always in the presence of the infinite, and ennobles the 



5C6 EMERSON 

accidents of human existence so that they partake of the ab- 
solute and eternal while he is looking at them." — Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. 

" He is moral first and last, and it is through his impas- 
sioned and poetic treatment of the moral law that he gains 
such an ascendancy over his reader. . . . When he died, 
it was not as a sweet singer, like Longfellow, who had gone 
silent ; but something precious and paternal had gone out of 
nature ; a voice of courage and hope and inspiration to all 
noble endeavor had ceased to speak. . . . He says, as 
for other things he makes poetry of them, but the moral law 
makes poetry of him." — -John Burroughs. 

" He has been a delighted student of many literatures and 
many religions, but all his quotations from them show that he 
rejects everything which does not tend to cheer, invigorate, 
and elevate, which is not nutritious food for the healthy 
human soul. . . . He drew from all sources, and what- 
ever fed his religious sense of mystery, of might, of beauty, 
and of Deity was ever welcome to his soul." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His poetry comes from a large and pure nature, and it 
will always be prized most by the readers who are most in 
sympathy with the qualities which gain for the author the 
respect and the gratitude of those whose respect and gratitude 
are best worth having." — Charles Eliot Norton. 

11 He taught in the first place that this universe is a spirit- 
ual universe, a manifestation of God. ... In one of his 
poems, entitled ' Blight,' he laments the shallow cowardice 
of the age that contents itself with mere hearsay, and so misses 
the divine vision and the divine life." — W. H. Savage. 

il When Emerson wishes to speak with peculiar terseness, 
with unusual exaltation, with special depth of meaning, with 
the utmost intensity of feeling, he speaks in poetic form." 
— C. E. Richardsofi. 

" With Emerson it is always the special capacity for moral 
experience — always that and only that. We have the impres- 



EMERSON 507 

sion somehow that life had never bribed him to look at any- 
thing but the soul. ' ' — Henry Ja?nes. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Life is too short to waste 
In critic peep or cynic bark, 
Quarrel or reprimand ; 
'Twill soon be dark ; 
Up ! mind thine own aim and 
God save the mark ! " — To J. W. 

" Though love repine and reason chafe, 
There came a voice without reply, 
' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 

When for the truth he ought to die.' " 

— Sacrific/ 

" So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, IS*~\ 

When duty whispers low, ' Thou must,' 
The youth replies, ' I can.' " — Voluntaries. 

3. Individuality — Sincerity. — " Like all poets and 
philosophers who are classed as pantheists, Emerson had a 
pronounced individuality. Throughout his life he guarded it 
with a jealous care. He could never endure the thought of 
being the organ of any. ... In reading him we feel 
that we are in communion with an original person as well as 
with an original poet. . . . Nothing that can be said 
against him touches his essential quality of manliness. 
How superb and animating his lofty intellectual courage! 
' The soul,' he says, ' is in her native realm, and it is wider 
than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love.' The 
poet's character was on a level with his lofty thinking." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

" Emerson's ideal is the man who stands firm, who is un- 
moved, who never laughs or apologizes or assents through 
good-nature or goes abroad ; who is not afraid of giving of- 



508 EMERSON 

fence ; who never answers you with supplication in his eye — 
in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of 
life. . . . He leads, in our time and country, one illus- 
trious division, at least, in the holy crusade of the affections 
and intuitions against the usurpations of tradition and theo- 
logical dogma." — John Burroughs. 

" By this individualism was founded the great nation in 
which Emerson so thoroughly believed, and upon it must that 
nation rest in the future. . . . Both in poetry and in 
prose his influence is as spontaneous as that of nature ; he an- 
nounces and lets others plead." — C. F. Richardso?i. 

" He represents Thought in any adjustment of our poetic 
group, and furthermore — his thought being independent and 
emancipatory — the American conflict with superstition, with 
servility to inherited usage and opinion. . . . He has 
taught his countrymen the worth of virtue, w r isdom, and cour- 
age, above all, to fashion life upon a self-reliant plan, obeying 
the dictates of their own souls .... Emerson never felt 
the strength of proportion that compels the races to whom art 
is a religion and a law. . . . His instinct of personality, 
not without a pride of its own, made him a nonconformist." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" Instead of cultivating the tormenting and enfeebling spirit 
of scruple, instead of multiplying precepts, he bade men not 
to crush out their souls under the burden of Duty ; they are 
to remember that a wise life is not wholly filled up by com- 
mandments to do and to abstain from doing. Hence we have 
in Emerson the teaching of a vigorous morality without the 
formality of a dogma and the deadly tedium of didactics." 
— John Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Seek not the spirit, if it hide 
Inexorable to thy zeal : 
Trembler, do not whine and chide : 
Art thou not also real ? 



EMERSON 509 

Stoop not then to poor excuse ; 

Turn on the accuser roundly ; say, 

1 Here am I, here will I abide 

Forever to myself soothfast ; 

Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay ! ' 

Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, 

For only it can absolutely deal." — Sursum Corda. 

" I like a church, I like a cowl ; 
I love a prophet of the soul ; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles ; 
Yet not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled Churchman be." 

— The Problem, 

" Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine ; 
Stanch and strong the tendrils twine : 
Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
None from its stock that vine can reave. 
Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
There's no god dare wrong a worm ; 
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, 
And Power to him who power exerts." 

— Compensation . 

4. Conciseness — Condensation. — " So many pre- 
cious sayings enrich his more sustained poems as to make 
us include him at times with the complete artists. 
Bacon's elementary essays excepted, there are none in English 
of which it can be more truly averred that there is noth- 
ing superfluous in them. . . . Each sentence is an idea, 
an epigram, an image, or a flash of spiritual light. 
Terseness is a distinctive feature of his style. . . . No 
one has compressed more sternly the pith of his discourse. 
His generalizations pertain to the unseen world ; 
viewing the actual, he puts its strength and fineness alike into 
a line or an epithet. He was born with an unrivalled faculty 
of selection. . . . Emerson treats of the principles be- 



5IO EMERSON 

hind all history, and his laconic phrases are the very honey- 
cells of thought." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Within the limits of a single sentence, no man who ever 
wrote the English tongue has put more meaning into words 
than Emerson. In his hands, to adopt Ben Jonson's vigorous 
phrase, words ' are rammed with thought.' . . . Neither 
Greek precision nor Roman vigor could produce a phrase 
that Emerson could not match. . . . Look through all 
of Emerson's writings, and then consider whether in all liter- 
ature you can find a man who has better fulfilled that inspira- 
tion stated in such condensed words by Joubert, ' to put a 
whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and that 
phrase into a word.' After all, it is phrases and words won 
like this that give immortality." — T. W. Higginson. 

" The compactness of Emerson's writings is apparent to the 
most careless reader. The quatrain ' Teach me your mood, 
O patient stars,' really includes the thought and lesson of the 
eight stanzas comprising one of Matthew Arnold's best known 
poems. He gives us saws, sayings, admonitions, flashes, 
glimpses, few broad constructed pictures. . . . The 
poems, at their best, are more concise than the prose." — 
C. F. Richards on. 

"Our poet is also so terse in expression that his thoughts 
might be selected out and printed as epigrams. 
Never a word too much ; always the word chosen was the one 
inevitable word." — F. H. Underwood. 

"From first to last he strikes one as being something 
extremely pure and compact, like a nut or an egg. 
In fact, Emerson is an essence, a condensation. ... It 
would be impossible to condense any of his essays ; they are 
the last results of condensation j we can only cut them up and 
abridge them." — John Burroughs. 

"Who else could thus put eternity into a nutshell? Who 
else could reflect the universe in a mirror no larger than the pit 
of the eye? " — W. S. Kennedy. 



EMERSON 511 

" You are dazzled on every page by his superabundance of 
compactly expressed reflection and his marvellous command of 
all the resources of imaginative illustration. Every paragraph 
is literally 'rammed with life.' A fortnight's meditation is 
sometimes condensed into a sentence of a couple of lines. 
Almost every word bears the mark of deliberate thought in 
its selection. . . . That wonderful compactness and con- 
densation of statement which surprise and charm the reader of 
his books were due to the fact that he exerted every faculty of 
his mind in the act of verbal expression. A prodigal in respect 
to thoughts, he was still the most austere economist in the use of 
words. . . . The fire in him, which would instantly have 
dissipated ice into vapor, made the iron in him run molten 
and white hot into the mould of his thought when he was 
stirred by a great sentiment or an inspiring insight. It is 
admitted that he is worthy to rank among the great masters of 
expression ; yet he was the least fluent of educated beings. 
In a company of swift talkers he seemed utterly helpless, until 
he fixed upon the right word or phrase to embody his mean- 
ing, and then the word or phrase was like a gold coin, fresh 
and bright from the mint and recognized as worth ten times 
as much as the small change of conversation which had been 
circulating so rapidly around the table while he was mute or 
stammering." — E. P. Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Go thou to thy learned task, 

I stay with the flowers of spring : 
Go thou of the ages ask 

What me the hours will bring." 

— The Botanist. 

" The tongue is prone to lose the way, 
Not so the pen, for in a letter 
We have not better things to say, 
But surely say them better."— Life. 



512 EMERSON 

" Once slept the world, an egg of stone, 
And pulse and sound and light was none ; 
And God said, ' Throb ! ' and there was motion, 
And the vast mass became vast ocean." — Woodtwtes. 

5. Mysticism — Obscurity. — " The symbols he deals 
with are too vast, sometimes, we must own, too vague, for the 
unilluminated terrestrial and arithmetical intelligence. One 
cannot help feeling that he might have dropped in upon some 
remote centre of spiritual life where the fourth dimension 
of space was as familiarly known to everybody as a foot- 
measure or a yard-stick is to us." — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

11 It is, perhaps, due in part to the absence from Mr. Emer- 
son's genius of any controlling aesthetic element that he not 
infrequently indulges himself in mysticism, and makes his 
verses puzzles and enigmas not only to the common reader 
but even to the trained student of poetry." — Charles Eliot 
Norton. 

" It must be taken for granted that Wordsworth's experience 
was the result and record of genuine insight, and that it can- 
not be curtly dismissed as ' crazy, mystical metaphysics ' be- 
fore Emerson can even obtain a hearing ; for he undoubtedly 
was more crazy and mystical than Wordsworth cared to be, 
while independently following in the path which Wordsworth 
had marked out. . . . He was a man who had earned the 
right to utter these noble truths by patient meditation and 
clear insight. . . . It is this depth of spiritual experience 
and subtility of spiritual insight which distinguishes Emerson 
from all other American authors, and makes him an element- 
ary power as well as an elementary thinker." — E. P. Whipple. 

"His intuitive faculty was so determined that ideality and 
mysticism gave him the surest promise of realities. 
If a theist, with his intuition of an all-pervading life, he 
no doubt felt himself a portion of that life ; and the sense of 
omnipresence was so clearly the dominant sense of its attri- 
butes that to call him a theist rather than a pantheist is simply 



EMERSON 513 

a dispute about terms. . . . One may say that his philo- 
sophical method bears to the inductive or empirical a relation 
similar to that between the poetry of self-expression and the 
poetry of aesthetic creation, a relation of the subjective to the 
objective. . . . If he sought first principles, he looked 
within himself for them." — E. C. Stedman. 

" There is much in Emerson's works that will not stand 
rigid literary tests; much that is too fanciful and ethereal, too 
curious and paradoxical — not real or true, but only seem- 
ingly so, or so by a kind of violence or disruption. 
Not in the poetry of any of his contemporaries is there such a 
burden of the mystery of things." — John Burroughs. 

11 This [a passage in " The Celestial Love"] is mysticism, 
and the very romance of mysticism — intelligible to some, 
musical to all — and breathing deeply of Plato and the Ori- 
entals." — F B. Sanborn. 

"The mystic obscurity of some of the poems . 
has discouraged or repelled many from the study of any of 
them." — Julian Hawthorne. 

" Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensuous, im- 
passioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom either simple 
or sensuous or impassioned. In general it lacks directness ; it 
lacks concreteness ; it lacks energy. His grammar is often 
embarrassed ; in particular, the want of clearly marked dis- 
tinction between the subject and the object of his sentence is 
a frequent cause of obscurity in him. . . . A poem which 
shall be a plain, forcible, inevitable whole he hardly ever pro- 
duced. . . . Even passages and single lines of thorough 
plainness and commanding force are rare in his works." — 
Matthew Arnold. 

11 What are the faults of Emerson as a thinker and a writer? 
The most conspicuous, doubtless, is a certain vagueness of 
thought and utterance. . . . His very wish to be terse 
sometimes makes him obscure, and oftener causes him to seem 
obscure." — C. F. Richardson. 
33 



5 14 EMERSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thou art the unanswered question ; 
Couldst see thy proper eye, 
Always it asketh, asketh ; 
And each answer is a lie." — The Sphinx. 

" For Destiny never swerves, 
Nor yields to men the helm, 
He shoots his thought by hidden nerves 
Throughout the solid realm." 

— The World- Soul 

il A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell 
On the beauty of Uriel ; 
In heaven once eminent, the god 
Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud ; 
Whether doomed to long gyration 
In the sea of generation, 
Or by knowledge grown too bright 
To hit the nerve of feebler sight."— Uriel. 

6. Americanism. — " Every American has something of 
Emerson in him, and the secret of the land was in the poet — 
the same Americanism that Whitman sees in the farmer, the 
deck-hand, the snag-toothed hostler, atoning with its human- 
ities for their sins, past and present, as for the sins of Harte's 
gamblers and diggers of the gulch." — E. C. Stedman. 

u He was an American in no narrow and sectional spirit. 
He was an idealistic American — an American of the soul, car- 
ing for freedom and morality and the seeing mind more than 
for Concord River or for Wachusett Mountain." — G. W. 
Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 
" We grant no dukedoms to the few, 
We hold like rights, and shall ; — 
Equal on Sunday in the pew, 

On Monday in the Mall, 
For what avail the plough or sail, 
Or land or life, if freedom fail ? " — Boston. 



EMERSON 51$ 

" God said, ' I am tired of kings, 
I suffer them no more ; 
Up to my ear the morning brings 
The outrage of the poor.' 

" My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your king ; 
He shall cut pathways east and west 
And fend you with his wing. 

" Lo ! I uncover the land 

Which I hid of old time in the West, 
As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
When he has wrought his best ; 

" I show Columbia, of the rocks 
Which dip their foot in the seas 
And soar to the air-borne flocks 
Of clouds and the boreal fleece." 

— Boston Hymn. 

7. Appreciation of Nature. — " Emerson doubts his 
power to capture the very truth of Nature. Its essence — its 
beauty — is so elusive. . . . But such poems as the ' Fore- 
runners ' show how closely he moved, after all, upon the trail 
of the evading sprite. He seemed, by first intention, and with 
an exact precision of grace and aptness, to put in phrases what 
he saw and felt — and he saw and felt so much more than oth- 
ers ! He had the aboriginal eye and the civilized sensibility ; 
he caught both the external and the scientific truth of natural 
things and their poetic charm withal. . . . Emerson's 
prose is full of poetry, and his poems are light and air. His 
modes of expression, like his epithets, are imaginative." — 
E. C. Stedman. 

" Emerson's poetry of nature has the broadest range, from 
noon-day sky to swampy pool, from snow-capped mountain to 
skipping squirrel on the tree, It would be as just to call Em- 



5 16 EMERSON 

erson the poet of nature as to apply the familiar phrase to 
Bryant. . . . But nature in Emerson's verse is something 
more than mere prettiness. . . . The seer and the mystic 
could treat Nature in the simplest fashion when he had no 
other purpose in view." — C. F. Richardson. 

" He took his allusions and his poetic material from the 
woods and waters around him, and wrote fearlessly even of the 
humble-bee." — T. W. Higginson. 

" The perception of beauty in nature or in human nature, 
whether it be the beauty of a flower or of a soul, makes Emer- 
son joyous and glad ; he exults in celebrating it, and he com- 
municates to his readers his own ecstatic mood. . . . The 
singular attractiveness of his writings comes from his intense 
perception of beauty, both in its abstract quality as the 'awful 
loveliness ' which such poets as Shelley have celebrated and in 
the more concrete expression by which it fascinates ordinary 
minds. . . . His ' Ode to Beauty ' indicates that the 
sense of beauty penetrated to the inmost centre of his being 
and was an indissoluble element in his character. 
The sense of beauty, indeed, was so vital an element in the 
constitution of his being that it decorated everything it 
touched. His imaginative faculty, both in the conception and 
the creation of beauty, is uncorrupted by any morbid senti- 
ment. His vision reaches to the very source of beauty — the 
beauty that cheers." — E. P. Whipple. 

" An intense love of nature and a keen perception of the 
beauties of the external world, are manifested in every page of 
his writings." — C. C. Felton. 

" Both his poetry and his prose abound with lively descrip- 
tions of nature, and show the utmost delight in every sight 
and sound of the material world. . . . Nature is shown 
not merely as a background or theatre for man's activities but 
as a source of beauty and strength, working with and for us, 
and always leading us to worship. . . . When a man has 
a sincere admiration and awe in the presence of the works of 



EMERSON 517 

the Creator he will be in a mood to estimate Emerson at his 
true value." — F. H. Underwood. 

''His observation of Nature is always marvellously close 
and fine." — Matthew Arnold. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" For Nature beats in perfect time, 
And rounds with rhyme her every rune, 
Whether she work in land or sea, 
Or hide underground her alchemy. 
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." — Nature. 



" Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
Where the evening star so holy shines, 
I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
At the sophist schools and the learned clan, 
For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
When man in the bush with God may meet ? " 

— Good-Bye. 

'* Then I said, ' I covet truth ; 

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ; 

I leave it behind with the games of youth : 

As I spoke, beneath my feet 

The ground pine curled its pretty wreath, 

Running over the club-moss burrs ; 

I inhaled the violet's breath ; 

Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 

Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 

Over me soared the eternal sky, 

Full of light and of deity ; 



5 I 8 EMERSON 

Again I saw, again I heard, 

The rolling river, the morning bird ; — 

Beauty through my senses stole ; 

I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 

— Each and All. 

8. Frequent Crudity in Thought and Style. — 

" His verse, often diamond-like in contrast with the feld- 
spar of others, at times is ill-cut and beclouded. ... It 
becomes a question whether his discords are those of an un- 
developed artist or the sudden craft of one who knows all art 
and can afford to be on easy terms with it. I think there is 
evidence on both sides. ... It should be noted that 
Emerson's vision of the sublime in scientific discovery in- 
creased his distaste for mere style, and moved him to content- 
ment with the readiest mode of expression. . . . There 
was, it must be owned, a tinge of provincial arrogance, and 
there were expressions a little less than ludicrous in his early 
defiance of usage. " — E. C. Stedtnan. 

" Not even Wordsworth pressed so dangerously as did 
Emerson at times the borderland of what is bald or juvenile or 
apparently silly. . . . We sometimes find art, sometimes 
artlessness, sometimes deliberate crudity. Emerson's reflections 
in the ' transcendental mood ' do, beyond question, sometimes 
irresistibly suggest the close neighborhood between the sublime 
and the ridiculous. . . . Emerson's most conspicuous fault 
is a certain vagueness of thought and utterance. He maun- 
ders along in well-balanced sentences, which are not devoid 
of sense, separately, but which combine into no consistent or 
valuable whole. It not infrequently happens that the whole 
is less than the sum of all its parts." — C. F. Richardson. 

" He made desperate work, now and then, with rhyme and 
rhythm, showing that, though a born poet, he was not a born 
singer." — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Mr. Emerson is still careless about the way in which his 
thought embodies itself, and fails to guard his poetry against 



EMERSON 519 

the attacks of time by casting his poem in perfect and imperish- 
able forms. ... If there be much of the Greek philoso- 
pher in his composition, there is very little of the Greek 
artist." — Charles Eliot Norton. 

11 He is an extravagant, erratic genius, setting all authority 
at defiance, sometimes writing with the pen of an angel (if 
angels ever write), and sometimes gravely propounding the 
most amazing nonsense." — C. C. Felton*. 

"Even passages and single lines of thorough plainness are 
rare in his poetry. They exist, of course; but when we meet 
them, they give us a slight shock of surprise, so little has Emer- 
son accustomed us to them. . . . He is not plain and 
concrete enough, in other words, not poetic enough; . . . 
and a failure of this kind goes through almost all his verse, 
keeps him amid symbolisms and allusion and the fringes of 
things ; and in spite of his spiritual power, deeply impairs his 
poetic value. . . . His style has not the requisite whole- 
ness of good tissue." — Matthew Arnold. 

" And why are these verses — too often rude, harsh, or fantas- 
tic — to outlive the more polished and melodious poetry of 
other men ? First, because of their superior tone. 
He lamented his imperfect use of the metrical faculty, which 
he felt all the more keenly in contrast with the melodious 
thoughts he had to utter and the fitting words in which he 
could clothe these thoughts. He would have written much 
more in verse if he had been content with his own metrical 
expression as constantly as he was delighted with it sometimes. 
But it is also true that he purposely roughened his work." — 
F. B. Sanborn. 

" He uses words that are not only odd but vicious in con- 
struction ; he is not always grammatically correct ; and he is 
often clumsy ; and there is a visible feeling after epigrams that 
do not always come." — John Morley. 



520 EMERSON 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

11 Mighty projects countermanded ; 
Rash ambition, broken handed ; 
Puny man and scentless rose 
Tormenting Pan to double the dose." 

— Alphonso of Castile. 

" The maiden in danger 
Was saved by the swain ; 
His stout arm restored her 
To Broadway again. 

" The maid would reward him, — 
Gay company come, — 
They laugh, she laughs with them ; 
He is moonstruck and dumb." — Tact. 

" He [Cupid] affects the wood and wild, 
Like a flower-hunting child ; 
Buries himself in summer waves, 
In trees, with beasts, in mines and caves, 
Loves nature like a horned cow, 
Bird, or deer, or caribou." — The Initial Love. 

9. Spontaneity — Lyric Power. — "At times I think 
him the first of our lyric poets, his turns are so wild and 
unexpected. . . . He often captures us with absolute 
beauty, the poetry that poets love — the lilt and melody of 
Shelley — joined to precision of thought and outline. 
He had written poems of which the whole and the parts were 
at least justly related masterpieces — lyrical masterpieces. 
. . . The opening [of " The Sphinx "] is strongly lyrical 
and impressive." — E. C. Stedman. 

" The poetry of Emerson is valued, at least in some of its 
parts, both by those who find enjoyment in lyrical expression 
of common and laborious meditation or observation and by 
those who are willing to give to verse a deep study." — C. F. 
Richardson. 



EMERSON 521 

" Mr. Emerson's poetic genius seems as little modified 
by conscious will — as simply natural and inartistic — as the 
genius of the pine or hemlock." — Charles Eliot Norton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Spring still makes spring in the mind 
When sixty years are told ; 
Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
And we are never old. 
Over the winter glaciers 
I see the summer glow, 
And through the wild-piled snow-drift, 
The warm rosebuds below." — The World-Soul. 

" Hearken! Hearken! 

If thou wouldst know the mystic song 

Chanted when the sphere was young. 

Aloft, abroad, the pasan swells; 

O wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells ? 

O wise man ! hear'st thou the least part ? 

'Tis the chronicle of art. 

To the open ear it sings 

Sweet the genesis of things, 

Of tendency through endless ages, 

Of star dust and star-pilgrimages ; 

Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 

Of the old flood's subsiding slime, 

Of chemic matter, force, and form, 

Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm ; 

The rushing metamorphosis 

Dissolving all that fixture is, 

Melts things that be to things that seem 

And solid nature to a dream." — Woodnotes, II. 

10. Precision. — " Finally, this poet's scenic joinery is 
so true, so mortised with the one apt word, . . . and the 
one best word or phrase is so unlooked for that, as I say, we 
scarcely know whether this comes by grace of instinct or with 



522 EMERSON 

search and artistic foresight. . . . He was born with an 

unrivalled faculty of selection As he triumphed 

over the untruthfulness of the mere verse-maker and the dul- 
ness of the moralist, his instant, sure, yet airy transcripts 
gave his poems of nature a quality without a counterpart. 
Over and over again, he asserted his conviction that 
every word should be the right word." — E. C. Stedman. 

lt His subtle selective instinct penetrates the vocabulary for 
the one word he wants, as the long slender bill of those birds 
(the tenui-rostrals) dives deep into the flower for its drop of 
honey. ' ' — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Neither Greek precision nor Roman vigor could produce 
a phrase that Emerson could not match." — T. W. Higginson. 

" His own pride is always to have the ready change, to 
speak the exact and proper word, to give to every occasion 
the dignity of wise speech." — John Burroughs. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The prosperous and beautiful 
To me seem not to wear 
The yoke of conscience masterful, 

Which galls me everywhere." — The Park. 

" The housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 

— The SfioTV-Storm. 

Thy trivial harp will never please 

Or fill my craving ear ; 

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 

Free, peremptory, clear. 

No jingling serenader's art, 

Nor tinkle of piano strings, 

Can make the wild blood start 

In its mystic springs. 



EMERSON 523 

The kingly bard 

Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 

As with hammer or with mace." — Merlin. 

II. Suggestiveness — Intellectuality. — Emerson 
himself well defines this characteristic of his own style, when 
he says: " The most interesting writing is that which does 
not quite satisfy the reader. Try and leave a little thinking 
for him ; that will be better for you both. The trouble with 
most writers is they spread too thin. The reader is as quick 
as they ; has got there before them, and is ready and waiting. 
A little guessing does him no harm, so I would assist him 
with no connection. If you can see how the harness fits, so 
can he. But make sure that you can see it." 

" He has the immense advantage of suggesting something 
new to the diligent reader after he has read him for the fiftieth 
time. . . . His sentences have furnished texts for ser- 
mons ; his paragraphs have been expanded into volumes, and 
open minds, representing every variety of creed, have gladly 
appropriated and worked out, after their own fashion, hints 
and impulses derived from the creedless thinker and seer." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

" The essays cannot be said to contain any system of relig- 
ion, morals, or philosophy. The most that can be affirmed 
is that they are full of significant hints upon all these subjects, 
from which the author's opinions, if he had any, may be in- 
ferred." — C. C. Felton. 

11 We look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom 
our age has produced, and there needs no better proof of 
it than his masculine faculty of fecundating other minds." 
— Lowell. 

" From that time I have never ceased to read Emerson's 
works ; and whenever I take up a volume, it seems to me as if 
I were reading it for the first time. . . . He sometimes 
makes wonderfully simple observations, which yet disentangle 
the most intricate trains of thought." — *Grimm. 



524 EMERSON 

"His poetry is interesting, it makes one think; but it is 
not the poetry of one of the born poets. I say it of him with 
reluctance, because I dislike giving pain to his admirers." 
— Matthew Arnold. 

"Even in his poems that apparently run rapidly on, each 
line is packed with thought." — C. F. Richardson. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Can rules or tutors educate 
The semigod whom we await ? 
He must be musical, 
Tremulous, impressional, 
Alive to gentle influence 
Of landscape and of sky, 
And tender to the spirit touch 
Of man's or maiden's eye." — Culture. 



a 



(t 



Open innumerable doors, 
The heaven where unveiled Allah pours 
The flood of truth, the flood of good, 
The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. 
Those doors are men ; the Pariah hind 
Admits them to the perfect Mind." — Saadi. 

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 

Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk ? 

At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? 

Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 

And loved so well a high behavior 

In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 

Nobility more nobly to repay ? 

O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine." 

— For be a ranee. 

12. Transcendentalism. — "Against materialism Em- 
erson preached a spiritual, self-centred idealism. But still an- 
other element was present in all that he taught. It was the 



EMERSON 525 

element of reverential communion with nature and with the 
spirit from which nature came and under which it works. 
At its worst and vaguest, this spirit of Transcendentalism was 
akin to a loose and profitless Pantheism ; at its best, it was a 
helper of the highest and truest thing in humanity, its spirit- 
ual part. He restated for the modern world the eternal prin- 
ciples of transcendentalism, of spiritualism, of the inner light, 
never lost since the days of Plato." — C. F. Richardson. 

" There is always the idea of soul, central and pervading, 
of which Nature's forms are but the created symbols. 
Few have had Emerson's inward eye, but it is well that some 
have not been restricted to it. His voice comes 

1 like a falling star ' from a skyey dome of pure abstraction. 
If a theist, with his intuition of an all-pervading 
life, he no doubt felt himself a portion of that life, and the 
sense of omnipresence was so clearly the dominant sense of its 
attributes that to call him a theist instead of a pantheist is 
merely a dispute about terms. . . . One may say that 
his philosophical method bears to the inductive or empirical 
a relation similar to that between the poetry of self-expression 
and the poetry of aesthetic creation, a relation of the subjec- 
tive to the objective. . . . If he sought first principles, 
he looked within himself for them. ... I think that the 
weakness of ' transcendental ' art is as fairly manifested in Em- 
erson's first and chief collection of verse as were its felicities. 
. It is true that he was not the prince of transcenden- 
talists but the prince of idealists. . . . Emerson, a man 
of our time, while a transcendentalist, looking inward rather 
than to books for his wisdom, studied well the past, and earlier 
sages were the faculty of his school." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Human personality presented itself to Emerson as a pass- 
ing phase of universal being. . . . Born of the Infinite, 
to the Infinite it was to return. Sometimes he treats his own 
personality as interchangeable with objects in nature — he 
would put it off like a garment and clothe himself in the land- 



526 EMERSON 

scape. . . . The difference between Emerson's poetry 
and that of his contemporaries, with whom he would be nat- 
urally compared, is that of algebra and arithmetic. He deals 
largely in general symbols, abstractions, and infinite series. 
He is always seeing the universal in the particular." — Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. 

" I contrasted the coolness of this transcendentalist, when- 
ever he discussed matters relating to the conduct of human 
life, with the fury of delusion Under which merchants of es- 
tablished reputation sometimes seemed to be laboring in their 
mad attempts to resist the operations of the natural laws of 
trade."— E. P. Whipple. 

" Mr. Emerson is a transcendentalist whose nervous energy 
has been exalted, and whose viscera and animal spirits have 
been burnt away." — Edward Dowden. 

" He liked to explain the transcendentalists, but did not 
care at all to be explained by them." — Henry James. 

"Mr. Emerson is not to be confounded with any class, 
though he has strong affinities with the transcendentalists." 
— C. C. Felton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Is it that my opulent soul 

Was mingled from the generous whole ; 
Sea-valleys and the deep of skies 
Furnished several supplies ; 
And the sands whereof I'm made 
Draw me to them, self-betrayed ? " 

— Ode to Beauty. 

" Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
Halteth never in one shape, 
But forever doth escape, 
Like wave or flame, into new forms 
Of gem and air, of plants and worms." 

— Woodnotes, II. 



EMERSON 527 

" If thou trowest 
How the chemic eddies play, 
Pole to pole, and what they say; 
And that these gray crags 
Not on crags are hung, 
But beads are of a rosary 
On prayer and music strung ; 
And, credulous, through the granite seeming, 
Seest the smile of Reason beaming ; — 
Can thy style-discerning eye 
The hidden-working Builder spy, 
Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, 
With hammer soft as snowflakes flight ; — 
Knowest thou this ? 
O pilgrim, wandering not amiss! 
Already my rocks lie light, 
And soon my cone will spin." — Monadnoc . 

13. Lack of Logical Sequence. — "This was Emer- 
son's method — not to write a perfect poem, a poem that 
should be an inevitable whole, . . . but to write the 
perfect line, to set the imagination ablaze with a single 
verse, leaving the effects of form, of proportion, to be 
achieved by those who were equipped for it." — -John Bur- 
roughs. 

"They [Emerson's poems] are too naked, unrelated, and 
cosmic ; too little clad with the vesture of human associations. 
Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and some- 
times the pell-mell is enough to persuade us that Pope did not 
exaggerate when he said that no one qualification is so likely 
to make a good writer as the power of rejecting his own 
thoughts. . . . < Can you tell me,' asked one of his 
neighbors, while Emerson was lecturing, ' what connection 
there is between that last sentence and the one that went be- 
fore it, and what connection it all has with Plato? ' ' None, 
my friend, save in God,' was the reply. . . . As he says 
of Landor, his sentences are cubes which will stand firm, 



528 EMERSON 

place them how or where you will. . . . One of the 
traces that every critic notices in Emerson's writings is that it 
is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous, so 
inconsecutive." — John Morley. 

" Incompleteness — want of beginning, middle, and end — is 
their [Emerson's poems] too common fault." — Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes. 

" There is a certain impression left on the mind of Emer- 
son's readers which may be described as fragmentary. 
Philosophers and prophets do not feel bound to produce epics 
in twelve books or dramas in five acts or even blank verse 
poems fifty pages long. When Emerson had had his say in 
verse he stopped. . . . Emerson as a writer has been 
compared to that minister who gradually filled a barrel with 
separately written pages and picked out enough for a sermon 
when Sunday came. Again, it has been said that Emerson's 
essays would read as well backward as forward, sentence by 
sentence. ... In poetry, as in prose, Emerson prepared 
his bits of material when he would, and afterward elaborated 
them into symmetrical wholes at leisure or fit occasion." — 
C. F. Richardson. 

" Emerson cannot, I think, with justice be called a great 
philosophical writer. He cannot build; his arrangement of 
philosophical ideas has no progress in it, no evolution ; he 
does not construct a philosophy. . . . Emerson himself 
formulates perfectly the defect of his own philosophical pro- 
ductions when he speaks of his ' formidable tendency to the 
lapidary style.' ' I build my house of bowlders,' he says 
again, ' with very little system, and as regards composition, 
with most fragmentary results ; paragraphs incompressible, 
each sentence an infinitely repellent particle.' Nothing can 
be truer." — Matthew Arnold. 

"It [a certain lecture] was as if, after vainly trying to get 
his paragraphs into sequence and order, he had tried at last 
the desperate expedient of shuffling them. It was chaos come 



EMERSON 529 

again, but it was a chaos full of shooting stars, a jumble of 
creating forces." — Lowell. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The fate of the man-child, 
The meaning of man ; 
Known fruit of the unknown ; 
Daedalian plan ; 
Out of sleeping a waking, 
Out of waking a sleep ; 
Life death overtaking ; 
Deep underneath deep ? " — The Sphinx* 

" Mine and yours ; 
Mine, not yours. 
Earth endures ; 
Stars abide — 
Shine down in the old sea ; 
Old are the shores ; 
But where are the old men ? 
I who have seen much, 
Such have I never seen." — Hamatreya. 

" The rhyme of the poet 

Modulates the king's affairs ; 

Balance-loving Nature 

Made all things in pairs. 

To every foot its antipode ; 

Each color with its counter glowed ; 

To every tone beat answering tones, 

Higher or graver ; 

Flavor gladly blends with flavor ; 

Leaf answers leaf upon the bough ; 

And match the paired cotyledons." — Merlin. 



34 



BRYANT, 1794-1878 

Biographical Outline. — William Cullen Bryant, born 
November 3, 1794, in Cummington, Mass. ; father a skilful 
physician and surgeon, of fine literary and musical taste and 
some knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French, who was for 
several years a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts ; 
mother a woman of remarkably sensitive moral judgment; 
Bryant is precocious as a child, but nervous, puny, and deli- 
cate ; in 1797 the family remove to Plainfield, a vilkge near 
Cummington, but return in 1798 to a farm near Cummington 
owned by Bryant's maternal grandfather ; owing to the ab- 
sence of schools in the vicinity, Bryant, with his six brothers 
and sisters, receives his early education mainly from his par- 
ents, who provided for their children such books as the works 
of Hume, Plutarch, Shakespeare, and nearly all the acknowl- 
edged classic English writers of that day ; Pope, Cowper, 
Spenser, and Wordsworth seem to have been Bryant's early 
favorites ; he once told Parke Godwin that, while yet a boy, he 
had read "The Faerie Queene " many times through; the 
children of the family were subjected to severe Puritan disci- 
pline, and corporal punishment was common ; Bryant worked 
with his brothers on the grandfather's farm during the sum- 
mer ; there was little society, and all communication with the 
outside world was made on horseback ; while living at Cum- 
mington Bryant attends a district school, where he masters 
the common branches, and is faithfully drilled in the cate- 
chism ; he is also taught the rudiments of Latin and French 
by his father ; Bryant begins to make verses in his eighth 
year, and, at ten, delivers before his school an address written 

530 



BRYANT 531 

in heroic couplets, which is published in the county paper 
and is used as a stock piece for recitation in other schools ; he 
is asked by his grandfather to versify the first chapter of Job, 
and continues till he has versified the whole narrative ; Bry- 
ant's early poetic efforts are ridiculed by his father, but he 
continues, and his account in verse of the eclipses of 1806 is 
still preserved ; later he wins his father's favor by an apostro- 
phe in verse to Jefferson, severely satirizing that statesman, 
who was intensely disliked by the Federalist physician ; this 
satire of over five hundred lines was published in Boston in 
1808 by Bryant's father in pamphlet form under the title 
" The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times ; a Satire by a 
Youth of Thirteen ; " the first edition was exhausted in a year, 
and in 1809 appeared " a second edition, corrected and en- 
larged, together with the Spanish Revolution and Other Po- 
ems. By William Cullen Bryant ; " about this time Bryant 
also writes a creditable metrical version of David's lament over 
Saul and Jonathan, his first effort in blank verse. 

In November, 1808, he goes to reside with his uncle, the 
Rev. Thomas Snell, at Brookfield, Mass., and there begins 
preparation for college ; he soon develops ability to read diffi- 
cult Latin, and, at his father's request, renders parts of the 
"yEneid" into English verse; he begins Mrs. Radcliffe's 
" Romance of the Forest," but is dissuaded by his uncle, who 
tells him that such works have " an unwholesome influence ; " 
he has Amasa Walker as a fellow-student under Dr. Snell' s in- 
struction ; in eight months Bryant reads all of the " yEneid," 
the " Eclogues," the " Georgics," and Cicero's " Orations ; " 
he spends the summer of 1809 working in the hay field on 
his grandfather's farm, and is reproved for resting from his 
work to " make varses ; " in August, 1809, Bryant goes to 
the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, Mass., to learn Greek, 
and pays one dollar a week for board and tuition ; he makes 
such rapid progress that, as he says, " At the end of two 
calendar months I knew the Greek New Testament from 



532 BRYANT 

end to end almost as if it had been English ; " he returns to 
Cummington late in October, 1809, and there continues his 
college preparatory studies during the winter without a tutor ; 
in the spring of 18 10 he returns for a time to Plainfield, where 
he is instructed in mathematics by Hallock ; in September, 
18 10, Bryant attends, with his father, the Commencement 
exercises at Williams College, and easily passes examinations 
admitting him as a Sophomore. 

He enters Williams October 8, 18 10 ; at that time the col- 
lege Faculty consisted of the president, one professor, and two 
tutors; Bryant says in his " Autobiography: " " I mastered 
the daily lesson given out to my class, and found much time 
for miscellaneous reading, for disputations [in a literary so- 
ciety], and for literary composition in prose and verse; " in 
the summer of 181 1, before the close of his first year at Will- 
iams, Bryant, influenced by the example of his room-mate, 
John Avery, decides to enter Yale, obtains from Williams an 
honorable dismissal, and returns, in May, 181 1, to his home 
at Cummington, where he studies to prepare himself for enter- 
ing the Junior Class at Yale ; however, for financial reasons, 
his father finds it impossible to send the son to Yale, and so 
Bryant's college career is comprised in the part of a year at 
Williams, which he afterward regretted leaving ; while study- 
ing at home at this period he becomes interested in his father's 
medical books, and acquires from them a considerable knowl- 
edge of chemistry and botany — " meantime I read all the 
poetry that came in my way; " while at Williams he had 
rendered Anacreon's " Ode on Spring " with such merit that 
his college-mates mistook it for Moore's, with which they 
compared it, both being unsigned ; he continues his Greek 
studies after leaving college, making translations in prose 
from Lucian and in verse from Anacreon, Mimnernus, Colo- 
phon, Bion, and Sophocles ; Bryant also now renews his long 
rambles in field and forest, and, inspired by Kirk White's 
" Melodies of Death," he writes " Thanatopsis," beginning 



BRYANT 533 

the first sketch with the line, " Yet a few days," etc. ; " Than- 
atopsis " was written in October, 1811, but the manuscript 
was carefully hidden in Bryant's father's desk, without being 
subjected to criticism or inspection. 

Bryant was originally intended for the practice of medicine 
— the profession of his ancestors for three generations — but 
later his father decided to make him a lawyer, and in Decem- 
ber, 181 1, the son enters the law office of one Mr. Howe, of 
Worthington, Mass.; he studies with fair diligence, but con- 
tinues to versify and botanize ; he is strongly inspired by 
reading Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads," but his legal pre- 
ceptor warns him against such reading as a "sad waste of 
time;" during 1812-13 Bryant writes but one poem, a 
Fourth of July ode, written at the request of a Boston society, 
made through Bryant's father ; while at Worthington, Pry ant 
is fascinated by the daughter of a distinguished friend of his 
father's, and writes fragments of love-verses (never published), 
but the relationship is soon broken off; in June, 1814, he 
removes to the law office of Mr. William Baylies, of Bridge- 
water, Mass., a much larger town than Worthington ; he is 
most eager to finish his legal course in Boston, but his father's 
financial circumstances will not permit it ; Bryant devotes 
himself closely to study at Bridgewater, determining, as he 
wrote to a friend, " to tune the rural lay no more, 
but leave the race of bards to scribble, starve, and freeze; " 
he writes another Fourth of July ode in 18 14, deploring our 
war with England and denouncing Napoleon ; he is entrusted 
with the business of the office during the absence of his pre- 
ceptor in Congress ; he passes the preliminary test for ad- 
mission to the bar August 9, 1814; in correspondence with 
his preceptor at this time, Bryant manifests a warm interest 
in public affairs ; he even proposes to enter the army, but an 
attack of pulmonary disease compels him to go home and 
spend the month of November at Cummington ; during the 
intense political struggle of the day Bryant becomes a rabid 



534 BRYANT 

Federalist, and speaks of President Madison as "his imbe- 
cility;" he proposes to join the State militia, "being 
ashamed to stay at home when everybody besides was gone," 
and foreseeing, he thinks, a civil war ; he is appointed an ad- 
jutant in the Massachusetts militia in July, 1816, but the 
Peace of Ghent causes his services to be uncalled for. 

He passes his final legal examination and is admitted to the 
Court of Common Pleas August 15, 181 5 ; at this time he 
again devotes himself to a minute study of nature, and sketches 
several nature poems; he writes "The Yellow Violet " just 
before his admission to the bar, and the " Inscription for the 
Entrance to a Wood " about the same time; in December, 
1815, on his way to Plainfield, Mass., where he proposed to 
settle as a lawyer, he sees a wild duck flying homeward and, 
while walking, composes the lines " To a Waterfowl ; " after 
remaining eight months at Plainfield, he removes to Great 
Barrington, Mass., where he becomes a partner of one G. H. 
Ives ; soon afterward he suffers a second attack of pulmonary 
disease ; he is urged by his father to contribute in prose or 
verse to the North American Review, then recently estab- 
lished in Boston and edited by Phillips, a friend of Bryant's 
father ; but Bryant does not respond, having apparently re- 
solved to abandon the muses ; meanwhile the father discovers 
the manuscript of " Thanatopsis " and himself carries it to 
Phillips ; R. H. Dana, then one of the owners of the Review, 
declares the manuscript an imposture and says, " No one on 
this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses ; " 
1 ' Thanatopsis ' ' was first published in the North A?tierican 
Review for September, 181 7, and was then prefixed with four 
stanzas on death, found by Bryant's father with the manu- 
script, but having no connection with the poem and not in- 
tended by Bryant for publication ; this forbidding introduction 
prevented " Thanatopsis " from attracting much attention at 
first except from the critics, who still supposed it to have been 
written by Bryant's father ; in July, 1818, Bryant publishes 



BRYANT 535 

in the Review an essay on American poetry, being a review 
of a collection of American verses then just published ; in this 
article he "dismisses the poetical pretensions of the rhymers 
who were then in vogue ; " in 1819 he publishes in the Re- 
view an essay on " Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Verse." 

While in Great Barrington he holds successively the orifices 
of tithing-man, town-clerk, and Justice of the Peace ; his 
father dies of pulmonary disease in March, 1820; early in 
1820 Bryant promises to contribute several hymns to a Uni- 
tarian collection then forming ; later he delivers at Stock- 
bridge, Mass., a Fourth of July oration, in which he makes 
his first public protest against slavery ; during 1820 he also 
contributes to The Idle Man (a periodical then just established 
by Dana) " The Yellow Violet " and "Green River," the 
latter poem having been picked out of his waste-basket ; later 
he contributes to the same periodical "A Winter Piece," 
" The West Wind," " The Burial Place," and " A Walk at 
Sunset ; " during 1820 Bryant becomes betrothed to Miss 
Fanny Fairchild, the orphaned daughter of a well-to-do 
farmer living near Great Barrington, and they are married at 
that village June 11, 182 1 ; soon after his marriage Bryant 
is invited to deliver the usual poetical address before the Phi 
Beta Kappa society of Harvard University at the next Com- 
mencement ; he complies, and reads at Harvard, August 20, 
182 1, the poem entitled " The Ages ; " while in Boston he 
first meets the Danas, the Channings, and other prominent 
people, and has in his audience Allston, both the Adamses, 
the Quinceys, Story, Webster, and Edward Everett ; while 
there he also yields to the importunity of Dana and others, 
and prepares for publication a pamphlet of forty-four pages, 
containing eight of the best of his poems, namely : " The 
Ages," "Toa Waterfowl," " A Fragment from Simonides," 
" An Inscription for an Entrance to a Wood," " The Yellow 
Violet," "Green River," "The Song," and " Thanatopsis " 
— " such poems as had never appeared before in American lit- 



536 BRYANT 

erature ; " the same year (1821) gave birth to some of the 
best productions of Cooper, Irving, Halleck, Dana, Percival, 
Charming, and Webster ; Bryant's pamphlet received recogni- 
tion in Blackwood 's Magazine ; he is urged by Dana and others 
to write along poem, but he refuses, insisting that " there is no 
such thing as a long poem ; " in 1823 he writes a farce, satir- 
izing the practice of duelling, then common at the South ; it 
is submitted for criticism to Henry Sedgwick, who advises 
against publication, but incidentally urges Bryant to settle in 
New York and to become a contributor to the Atlantic Maga- 
zine, then published there ; Bryant accordingly visits New 
York on a tour of inspection in April, 1824, and there meets 
Cooper, Halleck, and Sparks ; during 1823-25 he contributes 
to the then newly established United States Literary Gazette 
(Boston) nearly thirty poems, including " Monument Moun- 
tain," " November," " To a Cloud," "The Lapse of Time," 
"A Forest Hymn," "March," "The Rivulet," "Autumn 
Woods," and " After the Tempest ; " for such work Bryant 
asks but $2 a poem, but the editor offered him $200 a year for 
an average of one hundred lines a month ; his profits on his 
first book of poems are less than $15 ; to the same magazine, 
at the same time, an unknown writer signing himself " H. W. 
L." contributes several poems, as does Percival ; the pub- 
lishers of the Gazette soon afterward issue a volume of " Mis- 
cellaneous Poems," including the work of all three poets; 
about this time Bryant begins but never finishes a longer nar- 
rative poem entitled "The Spectre Ship;" he writes also 
numerous reviews of American literature current at the time. 

Although he is successful and, by 1824, has argued cases 
before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, he continually 
manifests a disposition to leave law for literature ; he visits 
New York again in January, 1825, meets many literary men, 
and an attempt is made to found a new magazine with Bryant 
as editor, but the project fails, partially because he is a Uni- 
tarian ; he returns to New York in March, 1825, when The 



BRYANT 537 

Atlantic Magazine and The Literary Review are merged into 
The New York Review, with Bryant as joint editor with H. 
J. Anderson, former editor of The Atlantic Magazine ; Bryant 
leaves his family in Great Barrington, and takes lodgings in 
New York, but is joined by his family in the autumn ; in 
April, 1825, he delivers before the Athenaeum Society of New 
York four lectures on Poetry; during the winters of 1827, 
1828, 1829, and 1 83 1, he lectures on Mythology before the 
then newly formed National Academy of Arts ; meantime he 
publishes in his New York Review his poems entitled " The 
Song of Pitcairn's Island," "The Skies," "Lines on Re- 
visiting a Cemetery," " I Cannot Forget," "To a Mos- 
quito," " The Death of the Flowers," " The New Moon," 
"A Hymn to Death," "An Indian Girl's Lament," and 
"A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal," besides many prose 
articles, chiefly critical ; the Review changes names twice 
during 1826, and gradually expires ; meantime Bryant takes 
out a license to practise in the courts of New York, and does 
some legal work in connection with Henry Sedgwick ; dur- 
ing the summer of 1826 he becomes temporarily editor of the 
Evening Post, pending the decision of Dana, to whom the 
editorship had been offered ; he acts as subordinate editor 
during 1827 and 1828, finding the work, at least financially, 
"better than poetry and magazines;" during 1828, 1829, 
and 1830 he edits an annual called "The Talisman," to 
which he contributes his poems entitled "To the Past," 
"The Evening Wind," and several others ; on the death of 
the chief editor and owner of the Evening Tost, in July, 1829, 
Bryant becomes chief editor and a partial owner ; he strongly 
supports President Jackson, and once inflicts corporal chastise- 
ment on a political adversary ; he writes almost no poetry 
from 1829 to 1835 ; in 1831 he publishes a volume contain- 
ing eighty poems — all he had written since his pamphlet of 
1821; this volume serves to place Bryant, in the opinion 
(then expressed) of critics like Longfellow and Prescott, " at 



538 BRYANT 

the head of our poetic literature; " through the good offices 
of Irving, then living in England, Bryant's poems are re- 
printed in London in March, 1832, with a dedication (written 
by Irving) to Samuel Rogers; the volume is well received in 
England, being highly praised by Professor Wilson in Black- 
wood 's Magazine. 

During the spring of 1832 Bryant visits his brothers, who 
had settled in Illinois, and, while there, accidentally meets 
Lincoln, then "a tall, awkward, uncouth lad," leading a 
company of volunteers to the Blackhawk Indian War ; on his 
return he settles with his family in Hoboken, N. J., to avoid 
the cholera, then raging in New York, but he remains at his 
post as editor throughout that terrible summer ; he warmly 
supports President Jackson's Union proclamation in Decem- 
ber, 1832 ; he also supports Jackson in his memorable struggle 
against the United States Bank, and thus incurs much popular 
hostility; he visits Canada, with his wife, in 1833; early in 
1834 Bryant and his paper are frequently threatened with 
violence by anti-abolition mobs; he sails for France, June 24, 
1834, spends several weeks in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, 
and goes thence to Italy, where he remains four months, 
chiefly at Rome, Naples, Florence, and Pisa ; thence by the 
Tyrol to Munich for three months, and thence to Heidelberg for 
four months ; he meets Longfellow in Heidelberg, and reaches 
home March 26, 1836; on his return he declines a public 
dinner offered him by Irving, Halleck, and others, and begins 
his life-long struggle for international copyright; in 1836 he 
publishes another edition of his poems, this time through the 
Harpers, and receives $125 for the first twenty-five hundred 
copies ; he grows weary of journalism and of city life, and 
seriously proposes to remove to the prairies of Illinois; he 
becomes unpopular by his editorial opposition to " fiat money," 
usury laws, and the slave-trade, and suffers some social ostra- 
cism ; he first meets Parke Godwin in 1836, and soon afterward 
employs him as an assistant editor ; in 1837 Bryant opposes 



BRYANT 539 

the attitude of his friend, President Van Buren, toward slavery, 
but supports his financial policy; in August, 1837, he is 
challenged to a duel by one Holland, an editor of the Times, 
but avoids the trouble by a skilful reply ; in his long walks 
about New York he becomes " a most indefatigable tramp ; " 
he frequently entertains Cooper, Halleck, Longfellow, and 
Audubon, and brings out Dana's "Two Years before the 
Mast " after the manuscript has been repeatedly rejected ; he 
vigorously satirizes "the singing campaign" of Harrison in 

1840 ; during the summer he roams through the Catskills with 
Cole, the artist, and with Cole names many of the wild points 
in that region (see Bryant's poem "The Catterskill Falls") ; 
he incurs popular hostility for refusing to put his paper into 
mourning dress on the death of Harrison ; in the spring of 

1 84 1 he again visits Illinois, where the wolves were still howl- 
ing on the prairies ; in 1842 he vigorously opposes " the 
black tariff," and both lectures and writes in support of 
homoeopathy ; during February of this year he is formally 
entertained at a breakfast given in his honor by Dickens, 
whose first inquiry after landing was, " Where is Bryant?" 
Bryant afterward entertains Dickens at his own home, and 
later publishes, at the request of Dickens, the address of the 
latter to the American people in favor of international copy- 
right ; during 1842 Bryant also prepares a new volume of his 
poems, the Harpers having then sold five editions of the earlier 
volume; the new volume includes "The Painted Cup," 
"The Antiquity of Freedom," "The Fountain," "An 
Evening Reverie," and sixteen others written since his return 
from Europe ; in the spring of 1843 he makes a tour through 
the South, spends a month among the cotton-planters of South 
Carolina, listening to their defence of their favorite " Institu- 
tion," and then revels in the delights of a tropical spring in 
Florida; during the same spring he buys "forty acres of 
solid earth ... on the north side of Long Island," 
to which he gives the name of Roslyn, for a country home. 



540 BRYANT 

In the summer of 1843 Bryant joins David Dudley Field 
and others in publishing a manifesto against the annexation of 
Texas ; he sails again for Europe, April 22, 1845, in company 
with Charles Leupp, an artist friend ; he lands at Liverpool, 
visits James Martineau, and reaches London in June; he is 
given a public dinner in London by Edward Everett, then our 
British Minister, and meets there Samuel Rogers, Monckton 
Milnes, Thomas Moore, and other literary lights ; later he 
meets Cobden, Bright, Fox, Hallam, Lyell, Whewell, Fara- 
day, and Herschel (the last five at Cambridge) ; Bryant takes 
up his residence at Leamington, whence he makes long pedes- 
trian and carriage tours to Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, etc. ; 
he meets Wordsworth at Windermere in July, being presented 
by Crabbe Robinson ; he goes thence to Edinburgh, Ireland, 
London, and Paris; thence by way of the Netherland cities 
to Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Leipsic, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, 
Vienna, Trieste, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Genoa, 
Milan, walking over the Simplon by moonlight, and so to 
Geneva and back to Paris and London (see his " Letters of 
Travel ") ; he returns to New York and to his home at Roslyn 
in November, 1845; during 1845-46 Bryant writes "The 
Stream of Life," "The Unknown Way," and " The Wander- 
ing Moon," and prepares a new edition of his older poetry, 
first submitting all his poems to the criticism of his friend 
Dana, with the intention of omitting from the new edition 
any disapproved by Dana ; Bryant adopts most of Dana's 
suggestions and, by his advice, omits none of the poems ; 
during the year 1846 he again visits his mother and brothers in 
Illinois, and returns by way of Lake Michigan and Mackinaw ; 
the new volume of poems appears in December, and is received 
with unabated public favor; during 1846, Bryant also begins 
his correspondence with Longfellow; in May, 1847, he loses 
his mother, to whom he refers in the poem beginning " May 
Sun sheds an amber light." 

During the summer of 1847 he vists Boston, Portland, 



BRYANT 541 

Augusta, and the White Mountains, which he declares equal 
to those of Switzerland except for the snow-capped peaks ; on 
May 4, 1848, Bryant delivers, by invitation of the Academy 
of Design, a glowing eulogy on his friend Thomas Cole, 
the artist; in the summer of 1848 he joins with the editors 
of several other prominent journals in a call for a conven- 
tion of "all who are in favor of free soil, free speech, free 
labor, and free men," and later he becomes a fervent sup- 
porter of Van Buren in his presidential campaign ; early in 
1849 Bryant secures John Bigelow as an assistant editor of 
the Post, and thus obtains more leisure for travel ; he starts 
for Cuba in March, 1849, stopping in South Carolina and 
Florida, and reaching Havana April 7th ; spends a month in 
Cuba, where the treatment of the slaves greatly intensifies his 
feeling against the "institution;" soon after returning to 
New York he starts, June 13, 1849, on a third trip to Europe, 
again having Leupp as a companion ; he spends much time 
in the public and private picture galleries of London ; thence 
to the Orkney and Shetland Islands by way of Edinburgh 
and Perth, and thence to the Continent, which he finds 
" filled with soldiers ; " to Munich by way of Stuttgart, thence 
to Switzerland, and back to New York in December ; soon 
after his return he publishes, at the request of G. P. Putnam, 
a volume of his letters of travel, written from Illinois, Mack- 
inaw, the South, Cuba, and Europe; he devotes much time 
to the improvement of his estate at Roslyn, to which he 
becomes devotedly attached ; in 1850 he strongly opposes 
Henry Clay's " Compromise Measure." 

In February, 1852, at the request of the New York His- 
torical Society, Bryant delivers an address on Cooper, then 
lately deceased, Webster being the presiding officer on the 
occasion, and Irving one of the guests; in 1852, becoming 
disgusted with the indifference of the Free Soil party toward 
slavery and the tariff, Bryant supports Pierce in his presi- 
dential campaign ; late in this year he abandons Pierce, and 



542 BRYANT 

becomes a warm supporter of the Free Soil movement in 
Kansas; in November, 1852, he sails for the Orient, with 
Leupp again as a companion ; while passing through London 
he meets "a. blue-stocking lady who writes for the West- 
niinster Review, named Evans, and a Mr. Spenser, a book- 
seller ; " he is in Paris on the day of the proclamation of the 
second empire; thence, by way of Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, 
Naples, and Malta, to Alexandria ; thence to Cairo and up the 
Nile as far as the first Cataract ; thence on camel-back across 
" the little desert," reaching Jerusalem February 13, 1853; he 
visits Nazareth, Tyre, Damascus, etc., and crosses from Reyrut 
to Constantinople; thence to Smyrna, Athens, Corinth, 
Trieste, Venice, etc., back to Paris, and reaches home in 
June, 1853, completely disguised in a long white beard, and 
" begins grinding at the mill again " (see his " Letters from 
the East"); late in 1854 he issues another volume of his 
poems, this time through the Appletons, who become his pub- 
lishers thenceforth. 

In 1854-55 he takes an active part in forming the Repub- 
lican Party ; he continues his support of the Kansas Free Soil 
movement, and supports Fremont in the campaign of 1856; 
he starts, with his wife, on a fifth voyage to Europe, May 7, 
1857, hoping thus to improve her health; they visit Paris, 
Heidelberg, southern France, and Spain, where Bryant meets 
Emilio Castelar ; on reaching Naples he is detained four 
months by Mrs. Bryant's illness ; while there he reads much 
Italian literature, and writes "The Sick Bed," "The River 
by Night," " The Life that Is," and " A Day Dream ; " he 
revisits Rome, and there first familiarly meets Hawthorne ; he 
meets him again at Florence at the home of the Brownings, 
where both were guests ; he meets Landor also at Florence, 
and later renews at Paris his intimate acquaintance with the 
Brownings; while in Paris he declines a proffered appoint- 
ment as one of the Regents of the University of the State of 
New York; he returns to this country September 9, 1858, 



BRYANT 543 

with Mrs. Bryant improved in health; during the summer of 
1859 he foresees the seriousness of the impending war, and 
predicts the erection of a monument to John Brown within 
ten years ; he presides on the occasion of Lincoln's first speech 
in New York, and afterward supports him as a nominee for 
the presidency; during 1859, saddened by the loss of several 
friends, he writes " The Cloud on the Way," " Waiting by the 
Gate," "The New and Old," and "The Third of Novem- 
ber; " during i860, impressed by the deaths of Humboldt, 
Macaulay, Irving, Prescott, DeQuincey, and others, he writes 
"The Constellations;" April 3, i860, he delivers a eulogy 
on Irving, at the request of the New York Historical Society, 
and is followed by Edward Everett ; he is made a member of 
the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1861 ; in the autumn 
of i860 he visits friends in western Maryland, where he finds 
Lincoln flags flying; during the summer of i860 he supports 
Lincoln against Seward for the presidential nomination, and 
writes to Lincoln after the nomination, urging him to " make 
no speeches, . . . enter into no pledges," etc.; after 
Lincoln's election he strongly urges the selection of Chase as 
Secretary of State; he also approves of Welles and opposes 
Cameron as members of the Cabinet; he has an interview with 
Lincoln on his way to his inaugural ; he vigorously opposes 
the ideas of compromise suggested after the first battle of Bull 
Run; early during the Civil War he writes "Not Yet," a 
poem addressed to Southern sympathizers in Europe, and 
" Our Country's Call," which greatly aided Lincoln in his 
appeal for recruits. 

Early in 1861 Bryant expresses himself in favor of emanci- 
pation, and presides at a New York emancipation meeting 
addressed by Owen Lovejoy ; he approves Fremont's procla- 
mation of freedom in August, 1861 ; he becomes an intimate 
counsellor of Secretary Chase, and strongly opposes the issue 
of " greenbacks," urging instead a uniform banking system, 
based on government securities and a system of direct taxa- 



544 BRYANT 

tion, and clearly foretelling the evil that has since resulted 
from the ''greenback" issue; he also remonstrates with 
Lincoln, vehemently urging him not to sign the bill to issue 
the United States legal tender notes ; he also remonstrates 
against the tardiness of McClellan ; in a personal visit to 
Lincoln, at Washington, in August, 1862, he opposes the idea 
of centralizing our troops against Richmond; during the 
winter of 1862-63 ne see ks relief from the horrors of war by 
writing his fairy poems, " Sela," " The Little People of the 
Snow," and an incomplete poem entitled " A Tale of Cloud- 
land ; " in July, 1863, he aids in defending the Evening Post 
building during the "draft riots; " later in the same winter 
he writes " The Poet " and " The Path," and begins, at first 
in a fragmentary way, his great translation of Homer ; he 
publishes his translation of the Fifth Book of the "Odyssey ' ' in 
the Atlantic Monthly, and later collects his more recent poems, 
including this translation and " The Rain Dream," into a vol- 
ume with the title "Thirty Poems;" during 1863 he also 
writes "The Return of the Birds " and " My Autumn Walk ; " 
although these poems express a love of peace, Bryant vehe- 
mently opposes the talk of compromise after Gettysburg, 
and as vehemently condemns any attempt to punish free 
speech on either side ; in October, 1864, he contributes to the 
Atlantic Monthly the poem "My Autumn Walk," with the 
note, " Ask me for no more poetry. . . . Nobody in the years 
after seventy can produce anything in poetry save the thick 
and muddy last running of the cask from which all the clear 
and sprightly liquor has been already drawn; " as his views 
on finance and emancipation gradually prove to have been 
correct, Bryant and his paper become more widely popular ; 
Godwin declares that, during the war, the income from the 
Post for a year was a considerable fortune ; Bryant spends 
large amounts in charity and in the improvement of Roslyn, 
planting there every known tree and shrub that the soil and 
climate would permit ; his seventieth birthday, November 3, 



BRYANT 545 

1864, is widely celebrated, and is publicly commemorated by 
the Century Club of New York, an organization of which 
Bryant had been one of the founders ; Bancroft, Bayard Tay- 
lor, Holmes, Emerson, Stoddard, Julia Ward Howe, Whit- 
tier, and many others take part, and Lowell writes for the 
occasion "Our Bard of Seventy-six." 

Early in 1865 Bryant addresses to the soldiers of the Union 
Army an open letter, commending them for their work during 
1864 ; about the same time he also urges strongly a constitu- 
tional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United 
States ; on the death of Lincoln Bryant is strongly urged by 
Whittier, Holmes, and others to prepare a memoir of Lincoln, 
but he declines on the ground that he is too near Lincoln, in 
time, to write impartially ; in the summer of 1865 he declines 
to write a poem for the Commencement of Williams College, 
declaring that " youth is the time for such imprudences ; " 
about the same time he writes his poem entitled " The Death 
of Slavery," which has been called the nation's hymn of 
thanksgiving ; in the summer of 1865 he buys the old farm 
and homestead at Cummington, Mass., where he was born, 
and remodels it for a summer home, hoping thus to improve 
his wife's failing health; he invites all his relatives from Illi- 
nois to be present at the ceremony of " hanging the pot," but 
Mrs. Bryant dies at Roslyn July 27, 1866, before ever taking 
possession of the new house ; during 1866 Bryant vigorously 
advocates liberal treatment of the seceding States, and insists 
on federal protection of the negroes in their civil rights ; vis- 
iting Cummington in October, 1866, he writes there his lines 
entitled " October, 1866," and soon afterward starts on his 
sixth trip to Europe, with his second daughter, Julia, as a com- 
panion j about the same time he decides to seek relief from his 
great sorrow in completing his translation of Homer ; he buys 
a pocket edition of the Greek poet, and sets himself the task of 
forty lines a day ; he spends several weeks in southern France, 
Spain, and Italy, and meets Lord Lytton and Garibaldi while in 
35 



546 BRYANT 

Florence; after several months in Rome they return to Paris 
by way of Munich and the principal German cities, and thence 
through England to Roslyn September 9, 1867 ; Bryant passes 
most of the succeeding autumn and winter " trifling with Ho- 
mer ; " he is tendered a public dinner in New York, January 
30, 1868, by the Free Trade League, of which he had long 
been president ; he continues his translation of Homer during 
1878, consulting other translations only on questions of con- 
struction ; in February, 1869, he prepares and reads before 
the New York Historical Society an address on Halleck, who 
died in 1867 ; in June, 1869, he responds to a toast at the 
Alumni dinner of Williams College ; during 1868-69 he writes 
the hymns " A Brighter Day," " Among the Trees," and " A 
May Evening," and collects and publishes his " Letters from the 
East ; " he completes his translation of the " Iliad " January 4, 
1870; Volume I. is published February 19, and Volume II. 
June 15, 1870 ; while reading the proofs Bryant discovers that 
some lines have been omitted, and so he revises the whole 
work, comparing line by line with the original ; the " Iliad " 
proves to be a popular success ; during 1870 he assists in pre- 
paring the anthology entitled ' ' A Library of Poetry and Song, ' ' 
his work consisting mainly in revising the selections made by 
assistant editors, rejecting several, and suggesting some poems ; 
he begins translating the " Odyssey " in July, 1870 ; he com- 
pletes the first book of the " Odyssey " in April, 187 1, and the 
second before the close of that year ; Volume I. of the " Odys- 
sey " was published September 20, 1871, and Volume II. Sep- 
tember 20,. 1872 ; Bryant also makes several public addresses 
during 187 1 ; in his later years he spends the winter in New 
York City, the spring and early summer at Roslyn, and the late 
summer at Cummington ; during most of his life he rises at half- 
past five, or before, in winter, and at five o'clock in summer; he 
begins his day regularly with an hour or more of vigorous exer- 
cise with light dumb-bells, etc. ; while in New York he walks 
at least six miles a day " whatever the weather or the state of the 



BRYANT 547 

streets ; " he uses neither tobacco, tea, nor coffee, very little 
meat, and less wine. 

In January, 1872, accompanied by his daughter, his brother 
John, and other friends, he sails for Nassau, and thence, after 
two weeks, to Havana, where he receives public attentions ; 
thence, late in February, to Mexico, where he is made a mem- 
ber of learned societies, and inspects many early historical rec- 
ords ; after several weeks in Mexico, the party return by way 
of Havana and New Orleans, and reach home in April, 1873 ; 
in the summer of 1873 he erects for his native town of Cum- 
mington a public library building, which he stocks with six 
thousand carefully selected volumes ; during this year he often 
walks eighteen miles a day about Cummington ; during the 
winter of 1872-73, at the request of the publisher, Mr. Putnam, 
he collects an edition of his orations and speeches ; with his 
daughter, Mrs. Godwin, he visits Florida late in the winter of 
1873 ; during that year he and Longfellow are made members 
of the Russian Academy, Tennyson being the only other con- 
temporary poet then holding that honor ; he speaks at Prince- 
ton College in July, 1873, and makes several public addresses 
during 1874 ; his eightieth birthday, November 3, 1874, is hon- 
ored by many friends, especially in Chicago and New York, an 
elaborate silver vase commemorative of Bryant's life being pre- 
sented in New York ; during 1875 he revises his Anthology, and 
undertakes a new edition of Shakespeare, aided by E. A. Duy- 
ckinck; though knowing Shakespeare's plays almost by heart, 
Bryant re-reads them all and compares carefully the various 
editions then existing ; owing to delay with the illustrations, 
this work was not published during Bryant's lifetime ; early 
in 1875 he calls a meeting in New York to protest against the 
invasion of the legislature of Louisiana by the federal forces, 
and addresses it " with the vehemence and fire of a man of 
thirty ; " later he is officially entertained at Albany by his old 
friend Samuel J. Tilden, then recently elected Governor; Bry- 
ant retains his power of memory — almost as marvellous as that 



548 BRYANT 

of Macaulay — till his latest days ; early in December, 1875, 
he entertains at Roslyn Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) ; 
about the same time he writes " Christmas in 1875 " and " A 
Life-Time; " during 1876 he writes the hymn for the Phila- 
delphia Centennial Exposition, and assists in entertaining the 
Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil ; during 1877 he takes part in 
ceremonies connected with the erection of a monument to 
Halleck, and speaks at the Commencement exercises of La- 
Fayette College; during 1878, his last year, he keeps up his 
long walks, speaks at many public meetings, and is more viva- 
cious and cheerful than ever before in his life; on May 29, 
1878, he delivers, at Central Park, New York, a speech at the 
unveiling of a monument to Mazzini ; while speaking he exposes 
himself to the sun, and, soon afterward, on entering the home 
of an acquaintance near the Park, he falls and seriously injures 
his head ; he remains in a semi-conscious condition till his 
death, in his New York home, June 12, 1878. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BRYANT. 

Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 

3 6 "39- 

Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co., 62-95. 

Symington, A. J., "William Cullen Bryant, a Biographical Sketch." 
New York, 1880. 

Godwin, P., "Biography of William Cullen Bryant." New York, 
1883, Appleton, v. index. 

Saunders, F., "Character Studies." New York, 1891, Whittaker, 

133-152. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." Boston, 1846, Francis, 

303-318. 
Taylor, B., " Critical Essays." New York, 1880, Putnam, 258-277. 
Godwin, P., " Out of the Past." New York, 1870, Putnam, 9-22. 
Poe, E. A., "Works." New York, 1855, Redfield, 3: 178-188. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, 1: 

52-53- 
Bigelow, J., "William Cullen Bryant." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co., v. index. 



BRYANT 549 

Hill, D. J., "William Cullen Bryant." New York, 1879, Sheldon & 

Co., v. index. 
Osgood, S., " Bryant Among his Countrymen." New York, 1879, 

Putnam, 1-32. 
Wilson, J. G., "Bryant and His Friends." New York, 1886, Fords, 

Howard & Hulbert, v. index 
Wilson, J., "Essays, Critical and Imaginative." Edinburgh, 1856, 

Blackwood, 191-223. 
Bartlett, D. W., " Modern Agitators. " Auburn, N.Y., Miller, 183-191. 
Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 

2: 35-49- 
Lowell, J. R., "A Fable for Critics." (Poetical Works.) Boston, 

1890, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 113-151. 
Whittier, J. G., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1892, Houghton, Mifflin 

&Co., 468. 
Shepard, W. S., "The Literary Life." New York, 1886, Putnam, 

98 119. 
Lippincotfs Magazine, 44: 698-712 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Unitarian Review, 33 : 346-357 (J. Benton). 
Dial (Chicago), 11 : 31-33 (O. F. Emerson). 
Critic, 3: ioi-i02(R. H. Stoddard). 
Nation, 36 : 366-367 (A. G. Sedgwick). 
Appleton's Journal, 6 : 477-480 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Atlantic Monthly, 42: 747-748 (E. C. Stedman). 
North American Review, 55: 500-510 (G. S. Hillard). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Dignity — Reserve — Elevation — Serenity. — 

" His general tone toward society is harsh. In his poems he 
continually speaks of escaping from the crowd, of despising 
the frivolity of society, of hating the every-day work by which 
man, in this life, keeps up that interesting and slightly im- 
portant connection between body and soul called ' getting a 
living.' . . . As a poet, his nature is not broad, sensi- 
tive, and genial, but intense, serious, and deep. He appears 
rather to have for it [the real concrete life of the nation] a 
subtle and supercilious antipathy, when, as a poet, he gives 
himself up to the influences of nature. . . . The healing 
power there is in Bryant's philosophic meditation on life, the 



550 BRYANT 

fine avenues through which his thought penetrates to what is 
deepest in the soul, and the beautiful serenity he not only 
feels but communicates, are all well illustrated in his poem on 
< The Return of Youth.' "— E. P. Whipple. 

"His sentiment was unsentimental; he never whined nor 
found fault with condition or nature; he was robust, but not 
tyrannical ; frugal, but not too severe ; grave, but full of 
humor. . . . The delights of nature and meditations on 
the universality of life and death withdrew him from the study 
of the individual world. . . . The most fervent social 
passions of his song are those of friendship, of filial and fra- 
ternal love ; his intellectual passion is always under restraint, 
even when moved by patriotism, liberty, religious faith." — 
E. C. Stedman. 

" There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, 
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 
Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights 
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights." 

— Lowell. 
" This steady flow of thought and purpose, beneath a calm 
exterior, untossed by storm and passion, marks Bryant's poet- 
ical work from the first." — C. F. Richardson. 

" As the patriarch went forth alone at eventide, the rever- 
ies of genius have been to Bryant holy and private seasons; 
they are as unstained by the passing clouds of this troubled 
existence, as the skies of his own ' prairies ' by village smoke. 
He has preserved the elevation which he so early ac- 
quired. He has been loyal to the Muses. At their shrine his 
ministry seems ever free and sacred, wholly apart from the 
ordinary associations of life. With a pure heart and a lofty 
purpose, has he hymned the glory of nature and the praise of 
Freedom. To this we cannot but in a great degree ascribe 
the serene beauty of his verse. . . . Like all human be- 
ings, the burden of daily toil sometimes weighs heavily on his 
soul : the noisy activity of common life becomes hopeless : 



BRYANT 551 

scenes of inhumanity, error, and suffering grow oppressive, 
or more personal causes of despondency make the grasshopper 
a burden. Then he turns to the quietude and beauty of nat- 
ure for refreshment. . . . The elevated manner in which 
Bryant has uniformly presented the claims of poetry, the tran- 
quil eloquence with which his chaste and serious muse appeals 
to the heart, deserve the most grateful recognition. . . . 
A beautiful calm, like that which rests on the noble works of 
the sculptor, breathes from the heart of Bryant. He traces a 
natural phenomenon or, in melodious numbers, the history of 
some familiar scene, and then, with almost prophetic empha- 
sis, utters to the charmed ear a high lesson or a sublime truth." 
— H. T Tuckerman. 

" Bryant has never been a popular poet, in the ordinary 
acceptation of the word ; neither is Wordsworth, to whom he 
has the nearest intellectual kinship. But he has ever been 
conspicuous, elevated beyond all temporary popularities." — 
Bayard Taylor. 

" Bryant is one for whom the grosser world had no allure- 
ments ; endowed with kind and gentle virtues, modest, un- 
assuming, mild, simple, elevated in sentiment, dignified in 
deportment, pure in life, a worshipper of the beautiful every- 
where in nature and art, perpetually attended by noble and 
benevolent aspirations, familiar as a friend with the best 
spirits of the past, but shrinking instinctively from contact 
with society." — Parke Godwin. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But wouldst thou rest 
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, 
These old and friendly solitudes invite 
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees 
Were young upon the unviolated earth, 
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, 
Beheld thy [Freedom's] glorious childhood, and rejoiced." 

— The Antiquity of Freedom. 



552 BRYANT 

11 Ah ! 'twere a lot too blest 

Forever in thy colored shades to stray : 
Amid the kisses of the soft southwest 
To move and dream for aye ; 

" And leave the vain low strife 

That makes men mad — the tug for wealth and power — 
The passions and the cares that wither life, 
And waste its little hour." — Autumn Woods. 

" Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen 
And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud — 
I often come to this quiet place, 
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, 
And gaze upon thee in silent dream ; 
For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
An image of that calm life appears 
That won my heart in my greener years." 

— Green River. 

2. Genuineness — Sincerity — Naturalness. — " He 

is so genuine that he testifies to nothing in scenery or human 
life of which he has not had a direct personal consciousness. 
His sincerity is the severity of character and not merely the 
sincerity of a swift imagination, which believes while it is 
creating. He does not appear to have the capacity to assume 
various points of view, to project himself into forms of being 
different from his own, to follow any inspiration other than 
that which springs up in his own individual heart. 
His thoughts, emotions, language, are all his own. He has 
earned the right to them by the contact of his mind with the 
object to which they relate. The power to heal, to glad- 
den, to inspire to sublime effort, to lift the mind above all 
anxious cares and petty ambitions, he has tested by conscious- 
ness."—^. P. Whipple. 

" He is not indebted to the patient study of books so much 



BRYANT 553 

as to calm communion with outer things. He has levied no 
contributions on the masters of foreign literature, nor depended 
upon the locked-up treasures of ancient genius for the materials 
of thought and expression. He has written from the movings 
of his own mind ; he has uttered what he has felt and known; 
he has described things around him in fitting terms, terms 
suggested by familiar contemplation, and thus his writings 
have become transcripts of external nature. Mr. Bryant's 
one demand is for a spirit of greater independence, for less 
imitation of form, for a more hearty reliance upon native 
instinct and inspiration : in a word, for greater freedom, 
greater simplicity, and greater truth." — Parke Godwin. 

" He is original because he is sincere — a true painter of the 
face of this country and of the sentiment of his own people." 
— Emerson. 

" I particularly enjoy Bryant's poetry because I can under- 
stand it. It is probably a sign that I am somewhat behind 
the age, that I have but little relish for elaborate obscurity in 
literature of which you find it difficult to study out the mean- 
ing and are not sure you have hit upon it at last. The truly 
beautiful and sublime is always simple and natural and 
marked by a certain unconsciousness of effort. This is Mr. 
Bryant's poetry." — Edward Everett. 

" Does any memory, however searching or censorious, recall 
one line that he wrote which was not honest and pure, one 
measure that he defended except from the profoundest convic- 
tion of its usefulness to the country, one cause that he advo- 
cated which any friend of liberty, of humanity, or of good 
government would deplore?" — George William Curtis. 

" He is not only a poet but a poet whose utterances have 
been singularly free from the varying fashions of his day. 
He is wholly without mannerism. His art never aims at being 
effectual and thus never betrays itself. Simplicity, nobility, 
and a plainness which rivals prose without being itself prosaic, 
are the characteristics of Mr. Bryant's style. He is an illus- 



554 BRYANT 

trious example of the youth of that highest poetic art, which 
does not spring from youthful ferment of the blood, or the 
motions of a keen enthusiastic sentiment which is dulled by 
time, but which is woven into the whole moral and intel- 
lectual being of the poet — is born with him and cannot be 
lost while he lives." — Bayard Taylor. 

" Bryant thought that verses that were obscure were not 
poetry. His constitutional aversion to sham of all kinds no 
doubt had its share in begetting this aversion. He would as 
soon have invoked the aid of a brass band to secure his audi- 
ence as to lend himself to any meretricious devices for extort- 
ing admiration. Such he regarded all surprising novelties of 
expression and all subtleties of thought which the common 
apprehension does not readily accept. He felt that no poem 
was fit to leave his hand if a word or a line in it betrayed 
affectation or required study to be understood." — John 
Bigelow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" On the breast of earth 

I lie and listen to her mighty voice — 

A voice of many tones — sent up from streams 

That wander through the gloom from woods unseen, 

Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air ; 

From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day, 

And hollows of the great invisible hills, 

And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far 

Into the night — a melancholy sound." — Earth. 

" Oft, in the sunless April day, 

Thy early smile has stayed my walk ; 
But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, 
I passed thee on thy humble stalk. 

tl So they who climb to wealth forget 
The friends in darker fortunes tried. 
I copied them — but I regret 

That 1 should ape the ways of pride. 



BRYANT 555 

11 And when again the genial hour 

Awakes the painted tribes of light, 
I'll not o'erlook the modest flower 
That makes the woods of April bright." 

— The Yellow Violet. 

u I stand upon their ashes in thy beam, 
The offspring of another race, I stand 
Beside a stream they loved, this valley-stream ; 

And where the night-fire of the quivered band 
Showed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung, 
I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue." 

— A Walk at Sunset. 

3. Sensibility to Nature. — "Bryant is not merely a 
worshipper at her shrine [Nature's] but a priest of her myster- 
ies and an interpreter of her symbolical language to men. 
And it is not merely the external forms but the internal spirit 
with which he has communed. He sees and hears with his 
soul as well as with his eye and ear. Nature to him is alive, 
and her life has coursed through the finest veins and passed 
into the inmost recesses of his moral being. He is, perhaps, 
unequalled among our American poets in his grasp of the ele- 
mental life of Nature. His descriptions of natural scenery 
imply that nature, in every aspect it turns to the poetic eye, is 
thoroughly alive. It is this which compels us to mingle ven- 
eration and wonder with admiration and delight in reading 
his works ; it is this which gives his poems their character of 
depth."— E. P. Whipple. 

"They transport us into the depths of the solemn primeval 
forest, to the shores of the lonely lake, the banks of the wild, 
nameless stream, or the brow of the rocky upland, rising like 
a promontory from amidst a wild ocean of foliage ; while 
they shed around us the glory of a climate fierce in its ex- 
tremes. . . . Bryant, dear Nature's nursling and the 
priest whom she most loves, is like the bards of old ; his spirit 
delights in fire, air, earth, and water — the apparent structures 



556 BRYANT 

of the starry heavens, the mountain recesses, and the vasty 
deep." — Washington Irving. 

" As to sensibility, no man ever lived more delicately sus- 
ceptible to external influences. Not only is his eye open to 
the forms of nature, but every fibre of his being seems to be 
trembling alive to them : like the strings of an yEolian harp, 
which the faintest breath of the wind can awaken. Words- 
worth has been called the apostle of nature ; Bryant said 
to his friend Dana, on first reading Wordsworth's ' Lyrical 
Ballads : ' 'A thousand springs seemed to gush up at once 
into my heart, and the face of Nature changed of a sudden 
into a strange freshness and life.' Nature, indeed, was win- 
ning him completely to herself, and one of the first-fruits of 
her caresses was the ' Yellow Violet.' ' A Fragment,' now 
known as ' An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' is 
due to the same feeling. Composed in a noble old forest that 
fronted his father's dwelling, it is an exquisite picture of the 
calm contentment he found in the woods. Every object — 
the green leaves, the thick roof, the mossy rocks, the cleft-born 
wind-flowers, the dancing insects, the squirrel with raised paws, 
the ponderous trunks, black roots, and sunken brooks — is 
painted with the minutest fidelity and yet with an almost im- 
passioned sympathy. . . . His principal theme is Nature, 
which he treats as one whose mission it was to show an uncon- 
genial world what beauty lay concealed in our vast, uncouth, 
almost savage wilds of woods and fields." — Parke Godwin. 
" Thank God ! his hand on nature's keys, 

Its cunning keeps at life's full span." — Whittier. 

" What Nature said to him was plainly spoken and clearly 
heard and perfectly repeated. Let him more and more give 
human voice to woods and waters, and in acting as the accepted 
interpreter of Nature, let him speak fearlessly to the heart as 
to the eye. The primeval woods, God's first temples, breathe 
the solemn benediction of his verse." — George William 
Curtis. 



BRYANT 557 

" Then came a woman in the night, 

When winds were whist, and moonlight smiled, 
Where in his mother's arms, who slept, 
There lay a new-born child. 

" She gazed at him with loving looks, 
And while her hand upon his head 
She laid in blessing and in power, 
In slow, deep words she said : 

u < This child is mine. Of all my sons 
Are none like what the lad shall be, 
Though these are wise, and those are strong, 
And all are dear to me. 

" ' The elder sisters of my race 

Shall taunt no more that I am dumb ; 
Hereafter I shall sing through him, 
In ages yet to come ! ' 

" She stooped and kissed his baby mouth, 
Whence came a breath of melody, 
As from the closed leaves of a rose 
The murmur of a bee ! 

" Thus did she consecrate the child, 
His more than mother from that hour, 
Albeit at first he knew her not, 

Nor guessed his sleeping power." 

— J?. IT. Stoddard. 

" I shall never forget with what feeling my friend Bryant, 
some years ago, described to me the effect produced upon him 
by his meeting for the first time Wordsworth's Ballads. . . . 
He had felt the sympathetic truth from'an according mind, and 
you see how instantly his powers and affections shot over the 
earth and through his kind." — Richard H. Dana. 

" Mr. Bryant is best known to us as the poet who has 
sought his inspiration from American forests. Save Emerson, 



558 BRYANT 

no American poet so often and so well described the Nature 
familiar to the residents of the Eastern States — the Nature 
which has been the background of most of our literature. 
Bryant might have said with Addison, ' Poetic fields encom- 
pass me around.' Nay, more, he interprets the meaning of 
Nature as the mirror and teacher of the soul. His observa- 
tions of skies, woods, and waters, and his power of description 
of the outer world, justly entitle him to his wide renown as a 
poet of nature. " — C. F. Richardson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" All the green herbs 
Are stirring in his breath ; a thousand flowers, 
By the road-side and the borders of the brook, 
Nod gayly to each other ; glossy leaves 
Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew 
Were on them yet, and silver waters break 
Into small waves and sparkle as he comes." 

— The Summer Wind. 

" ' There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits and 
sings, 
And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock 

swings ; 
A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples 

sweep, 
Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep.'" 

— The Strange Lady. 

11 The rain-drops glistened on the trees around, 
Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred, 
Save when a shower of diamonds, to the ground 
Was shaken by the flight of startled bird ; 
For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard 
About the flowers ; the cheerful rivulet sung 
And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward ; 
To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung, 
And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung." 

— After a Tempest. 



BRYANT 559 

4. Majesty — Sublimity. — " In his movement Bryant is 
the most Miltonic of American poets. No writer since the 
Elizabethan era has given to the world more rolling and 
majestic periods than has the author of * Thanatopsis. ' 

" Vast as are the themes, giving scope for the boldest and 
broadest nights and exciting the highest sense of sublimity, 
they are treated with a corresponding grandeur of language 
and thought. Certainly it ["Thanatopsis "] is marked by a 
grandeur and profundity of thought, a breadth of treatment 
and an imagination, that surprises us in one of his age — only 
seven teen . " — Parke Godwin. 

" The grandeur of i Thanatopsis ' may be limited and im- 
perfect, but it is still grandeur." — C. F. Richardson. 

"The perfection of its [" Thanatopsis's "] rhythm, the 
majesty and dignity of the tone of matured reflection which 
breathes through it, the solemnity of its underlying sentiment, 
and the austere unity of the pervading thought, would deceive 
almost any critic into affirming it to be the product of an 
imaginative thinker to whom years had brought the philo- 
sophic mind." — E. P. Whipple. 

" We have always considered his ' Antiquity of Freedom ' 
and ' Hymn to Death ' as stronger and loftier strains than 
'Thanatopsis,' the charm of which lies chiefly in its grave, 
majestic music." — Bayard Taylor. 

" The reverential awe of the irresistible pervades the verses 
entitled 'Thanatopsis' and 'A Forest Hymn,' imparting to 
them a sweet solemnity, which must affect all thinking hearts." 
— James Grant Wilson. 

"A noble simplicity of language, combined with these 
traits, often leads to the most genuine sublimity of expression. 
Some of his lines are unsurpassed in this respect. They so 
quietly unfold a great thought or a magnificent image that we 
are often taken by surprise." — H. T. Tuckerman. 



560 BRYANT 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Oh, God ! when thou 

Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire 

The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, 

With all the waters of the firmament 

The swift dark whirl-wind that uproots the woods 

And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call, 

Uprises the great deep and throws himself 

Upon the continent, and overwhelms 

Its cities — who forgets not, at sight 

Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, 

His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ? " 

— A Forest Hymn. 



tt 



And lo ! on the wing of the heavy gales, 
Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails ; 
Silent and slow and terribly strong, 
The mighty shadow is borne along, 



ti 



Like the dark eternity to come ; 
While the world below, dismaved and dumb, 
Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere 
Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear." 

— The Hurricane. 

"The hills 
Rocked-ribbed and ancient as the sun, — the vales 
Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
The venerable woods — rivers that move 
In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, — 
Are but the solemn decorations all 
Of the great tomb of man." — Thanatopsis. 

5. Fulness — Suggestiveness. — "Another character- 
istic of Bryant's poetical diction is its fulness of matter. 
Every line is loaded with meaning. This weight and wealth 
and compactness of thought sometimes fail to impress the 



BRYANT 56l 

reader in his blank verse, on account of its swift and slipping 
freedom of movement; but in his singing rhyme they are 
forced upon the attention." — E. P. Whipple. 

" Enough is suggested to convey a strong impression, and 
often by the introduction of a single circumstance the mind 
is instantly able to complete the picture. Some elevating 
inference or truth is elicited from every scene consecrated by 
his muse." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" Certain of Bryant's pieces it is impossible to read with- 
out gliding unconsciously into a thousand trains of associated 
thought ; a single epithet sometimes tells many a secret. ' ' 
— Parke Godwin. 

" His close observation of the phenomena of nature and 
the graphic felicity of his details prevent his descriptions 
from ever becoming general and commonplace." — Washing- 
ton Irving. 

"The gravity, the dignity, the solemnity of natural devo- 
tion, were never before stated so accurately and with such 
significance. We stand in thought in the heart of a great 
forest, under its broad roof of boughs, awed by the sacred 
influences of the place. A gloom which is not painful settles 
upon us ; we are surrounded by mystery and unseen energy. 
The shadows are full of worshippers and beautiful things that 
live in their misty twilights." — R. H. Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Then strayed the poet, in his dreams, 

By Rome's and Egypt's ancient graves ; 
Went up the New World's forest streams, 
Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves ; 

" Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark, 
The sallow Tartar, midst his herds, 
The peering Chinese, and the dark 
False Malay uttering gentle words." 

— The Death of Schiller. 
36 



562 BRYANT 

" Ah me! what armed nations — Asian horde 

And Lybian host — the Scythian and the Gaul — 
Have swept your base and through your passes poured, 

Like ocean-tides uprising at the call 
Of tyrant winds — against your rocky side 
The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died ! " 

— To the Apennines. 

" Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes 
Gather within their ancient bounds again. 
Else had the mighty of the olden time, 
Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned 
His birth from Lybian Ammon, smitten yet 
The nations with a rod of iron, and driven 
Their chariot o'er our necks." — Hy?nn to Death. 

6. Precision — Correctness. — "In language, indeed, 
he is so great an artist that no general term can do justice to 
his felicity. The very atmosphere of his sentiment, the sub- 
tlest tones of his thought, the most refined modifications 
which feeling and reflection receive from individuality, are all 
transfused into his style with unobtrusive ease. 
No melody of tone is ever introduced merely for the music ; 
no flush of the hues of language is ever used merely to give 
the expression a bright coloring, but all is characteristic, in- 
dicating the subordination of the materials to the man, the 
poetry to the poet. It is for this reason that Bryant is so 
valuable a guide to young lyrists, who are so prone to be car- 
ried away by words, and who emerge from their tangled 
wilderness of verbal sweets and beauties without any essential 
sweetness and beauty of sentiment and imagination, and be- 
come, at best, authors of poetical lines and images rather 
than poems. To this singular purity and depth of sentiment 
he adds a corresponding simplicity, closeness, clearness, and 
beauty of expression. His style is literally himself. It has 
the form and follows the movement of his nature, and is 
shaped into the exact expression of the word, sentiment, and 
thought out of which the poem springs." — E. P. Whipple. 



BRYANT 563 

"Now, when expression has been carried to the extreme, 
it is an occasional relief to recur to the clearness, to the exact 
appreciation of words, discoverable in every portion of Bry- 
ant's verse and prose. It is like a return fr«m a florid renais- 
sance to the antique; and indeed there was something Doric 
in Bryant's nature. His diction, like his thought, often 
refreshes us as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
Give his poems a study, and their simplicity is a 
charm. . . . Verse, to Bryant, was the outflow of his 
deepest emotions ; a severe taste and a discreet temperament 
made him avoid the study of decoration." — E. C. Stedman. 

1 * His art was exquisite. It was absolutely unsuspected ; 
but it served its truest purpose, for it removed every obstruc- 
tion to the full and complete delivery of his message." — 
George William Curtis. 

" It seems as if his whole study had been how his thoughts 
might be most beautifully uttered. Not only are words not 
misused, which would be small praise indeed, but none occur 
that any process of refinement can improve." — Parke Godwin. 

"He sees us [the flowers, etc.] where other eyes would see 
nothing, or at most the scenery of our great theatre — the 
earth. — One cannot read Mr. Bryant's poetry without wonder 
and admiration — wonder at the closeness of his observation 
and admiration of what he accomplishes by it." — R. H. 
Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Nor I alone ; a thousand bosoms round 
Inhale thee in the fulness of delight ; 
And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; 
And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, 
Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 
Go forth into the gathering shade ; go forth, 
God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth ! " 

— To the Evening Wind. 



564 BRYANT 

" Yet loveliest are thy setting smiles, and fair, 

Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues 
That live among the clouds, and flush the air, 

Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews. 
Then softest gales are breathed, and softest heard 
The plaining voice of streams and pensive note of bird. 

They deemed their quivered warrior, when he died 
Went to the bright isles beneath the setting sun ; 
Where winds are aye at peace and skies are fair, 
And purple-skirted clouds curtain the crimson air." 

— A Walk at Sunset. 

7. Tenderness — Pensive Melancholy. — In Bryant's 
poems a gentleness as soft as that of a woman, a tenderness 
mild and tearful as early love, simplicity like that of uncon- 
scious youth, are joined to the lofty philosophy of a sage. 
Innumerable are the passages that touch our best feelings, 
sinking quietly into the heart and melting it, like a strain of 
music, into liquid joy and love. ' ' — Parke Godwin. 

" He has the gift of shedding over them [his descriptions] 
a pensive grace that blends them all into harmony and of 
clothing them with moral associations that make them speak 
to the heart." — Washington Irving. 

" The chief charm of Bryant's poetry consists in a tender 
pensiveness, a moral melancholy, breathing over all his con- 
templations, dreams, and reveries, even such as are in the main 
glad, and giving assurance of a pure spirit, benevolent to all 
living creatures, and habitually pious in the felt omnipresence 
of the Creator. It overflows with what Wordsworth calls the 
religion of the Gods. The reverential awe of the irresistible 
pervades the verses entitled ' Thanatopsis ' and ' A Forest 
Hymn,' imparting to them a sweet solemnity which must affect 
all thinking hearts." — Professor Wilson [Christopher North]. 

" I linger upon it [" Thanatopsis "] because it was the first 
adequate voice of the New England spirit; and in the gran- 
deur of the hills, in the heroic Puritan tradition of sacrifice 



BRYANT 565 

and endurance in the daily life, saddened by imperious and 
awful theologic dogma, in the hard circumstance of the pio- 
neer household, the contest with the wilderness, the grim le- 
gends of Indians and the war, have we not some natural clue 
to the strain of ' Thanatopsis,' the depthless and entrancing 
sadness, as of inexorable fate, that murmurs, like the autumn 
wind through the forest, in the melancholy cadences of the 
' Hymn to Death? ' " — George William Curtis. 

"Wayward beauty or tender suggestiveness is not absent, 
but each is subordinated to the solemn reflections inspired by 
the scenes in which we live." — C. F. Richardson. 

" The still, sad music of humanity was ever sounding in 
his ears, moaning like the wind of the forest. . . . This 
large, far-reaching sympathy with his fellow-creatures is a 
marked characteristic of Bryant's poetry, and distinguishes it 
from that of every other American poet, living or dead." — 
R. H. Stoddard. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Let me move slowly through the street, 
Filled with an ever-shifting train, 
Amid the sound of steps that beat 

The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 

" How fast the flitting figures come ! 

The mild, the fierce, the stony face ; 
Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some 
Where secret tears have left their trace. 

" They pass — to toil, to strife, to rest ; 
To halls in which the feast is spread ; 
To chambers where the funeral guest 
In silence sits beside the dead." 

— The Crowded Street. 

" Thou changest not — but I am changed 
Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged ; 
And the grave stranger, come to see 
The play-place of his infancy, 



566 BRYANT 

Has scarce a single trace of him 

Who sported once upon thy brim. 

The visions of my youth are past — 

Too bright, too beautiful to last." — The Rivulet. 

11 Yet there are pangs of keener woe, 
Of which the sufferers never speak, 
Nor to the world's cold pity show 
The tears that scald the cheek, 
Wrung from their eyelids by the shame 
And guilt of those they shrink to name, 
Whom once they loved with cheerful will, 
And love, though fallen and branded, still." 

— The Living Lost. 

8. Nationality — Patriotism. — " His poems are strictly 
American. They are American in their subjects, imagery, 
and spirit. Scarcely any other than one born in this country 
can appreciate all their merit, so strongly marked are they by 
the peculiarities of our natural scenery, our social feelings, 
and our natural convictions. . . . Nor is the tone of 
these poems less American than the imagery of the themes. 
They breathe the spirit of that new order of things in which 
we are cast. They are fresh like a young people unwarped 
by the superstitions and prejudices of the age ; free like a 
nation scorning the thought of bondage ; generous like a so- 
ciety whose only protection is mutual sympathy ; and bold 
and vigorous, like a land pressing onward to a future of glori- 
ous enlargement. The noble instincts of democracy prompt 
and animate every strain. An attachment to liberty stronger 
than the desire for life, an immovable regard for human rights, 
a confidence in humanity that admits of no misgivings, and a 
rejoicing hope of the future, full of illumination and peace, 
these are the sentiments that they everywhere inspire." — 
Parke Godwin. 

"Bryant, for half a century, with conscience and knowl- 
edge, with power and unquailing courage, did his part in 



BRYANT 567 

holding the hand and heart of his country true to her now 
glorious ideal. . . . The last stanza of this poem [" The 
Ages"] breathes in majestic music that pure passion for 
America and that strong and sublime faith in her destiny, 
which constantly appears in his verse and never wavered in 
his heart." — George William Curtis. 

" Bryant's poems are valuable not only for their intrinsic 
excellence but for the vast influence their wide circulation is 
calculated to exercise on national feelings and manners." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

" The feeling with which he looks upon the wonders of 
creation is remarkably appropriate to the scenery of the New 
World. His poems convey, to an extraordinary degree, the 
actual impression which is awakened by our lakes, mountains, 
and forests. . . . We esteem it one of Bryant's great 
merits that he has not only faithfully pictured the beauties 
but caught the very spirit of our scenery. His best poems 
have an anthem-like cadence, which accords with the vast 
scenes they celebrate. . . . No English park, formalized 
by the hand of Art, no legendary spot like the pine grove of 
Ravenna, surrounds us. It is not the gloomy German forest, 
with its phantoms and banditti, but one of those primeval 
dense woodlands of America. . . . Any reader of Bryant 
on the other side of the ocean, gifted with a small degree of 
sensibility and imagination, may derive from his poems the 
very awe and delight with which the first view of one of 
our majestic forests would strike the mind." — H. T. Tucker- 
man. 

"The British public has already expressed its delight at 
the graphic descriptions of American scenery and wild wood- 
land characters contained in the works of our national novel- 
ist Cooper. The same keen eye and just feeling for nature, 
the same indigenous style of thinking and local peculiarity of 
imagery, which give such novelty and interest to the pages of 
that gifted writer, will be found to characterize this volume 



568 BRYANT 

[Bryant's poems] condensed into a narrow compass and sub- 
limated into poetry." — Washington Irving. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

There's freedom at thy gates and rest 

For Earth's down-trodden and opprest ; 

A shelter for the hunted head, 

For the starved laborer toil and bread. 

Power, at thy bounds, 

Stops and calls back his baffled hounds." 

— Oh Mother of a Mighty Race. 



n 



But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, 
Save with thy children — thy maternal care, 

Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on all— • 
These are thy fetters — seas and stormy air 

Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where, 
Among thy gallant sons who guard thee well, 

Thou laugh'st at enemies : who shall then declare 
The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell 
How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell ? " 

— The Ages. 

" These are the gardens of the desert, these 
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
For which the speech of England has no name — 
The Prairies. I behold them for the first, 
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight 
Takes in the encircling vastness." — The Prairies. 

9. Melody — Harmony. — " The cadences in ' The Ages ' 
cannot be surpassed. There are comparatively few conso- 
nants. Liquids and the softer vowels abound, and the partial 
line after the pause at ' surge,' with the stately march of the 
succeeding Alexandrine, is one of the finest conceivable 
finales. ' ' — Edgar Allan Poe. 



BRYANT 569 

" How can we praise the verse whose music flows 
With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose. ' ' 

— Oliver Wendell Ho hues. 
" The very rhythm of the stanzas 'To a Waterfowl ' gives 
the impression of its flight. Like the bird's sweeping wing, 
they float with a calm and majestic cadence to the ear." — 
If. T. Tuckernian. 

" There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in 

' Nurse of full streams and lifter up of proud 
Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud,' 

or an antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in 

' The shock that hurled 
To dust, in many fragments, 
The throne whose roots were in another world 
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.' " 

— Bayard Taylor. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Woo her when, with rosy blush, 

Summer eve is sinking ; 
When, on rills that softly gush, 

Stars are softly winking ; 
When through bows that knit the bower 

Moonlight gleams are stealing ; 
Woo her till the gentler hour 

Wake a gentler feeling." — Song. 

li Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew, 
There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru. 
Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to the air, 
Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair." 

— The Damsel of Peru. 

" When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
I steal an hour from study and care, 
And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
Where wanders the stream with waters of green, 



570 BRYANT 

As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink, 
Had given their stain to the wave they drink ; 
And they whose meadows it murmurs through 
Have named the stream from its own fair hue." 

— Green River. 

io. Calm Trust in Providence. — "The great princi- 
ple of Bryant's faith is that ' Eternal love doth keep in his 
complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep. ' To set forth 
in strains the most attractive and lofty this glorious sentiment 
is the constant aim of his poetry." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" He says in a letter that he felt as he walked up the hills 
very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was going 
to become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he 
ascended and darker with the coming on of night. The sun 
had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas 
of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England 
skies ; and while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with 
rapt admiration, a solitary bird made its way along the illumi- 
nated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was 
lost in the distance, asking himself whither it had come and 
to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house 
where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full of 
what he had seen and felt, and he wrote those lines, as imper- 
ishable as our own language, ' The Waterfowl.' The solemn 
tone in which they conclude, and which by some critics has 
been thought too moralizing, was as much a part of the scene 
as the flight of the bird itself, which spoke not alone to his 
eye but to his soul. To have omitted that grand expression 
of faith and hope in a divine guidance would have been to 
violate the entire truth of the vision." — Parke Godwin. 

" This philosophy of life is a serious one ; but it admits of 
consolation and cheerfulness. It is dreary in Byron; it is 
awful in Ecclesiastes ; but it is neither in Bryant." — R. H. 
Stoddard. 

"There is no repining, no attempt to shield his self-love 



BRYANT 571 

by holding Providence responsible for his hardships ; still less 
do we find there any signs of surrender or of despair, but the 
same pious trust in the Divine guidance which a dozen years 
before had sustained him in another crisis in his career and 
which found such lofty expressions in the lines ' To a Water- 
fowl.' His inspiration was always from above. In the flower, 
in the stream, in the tempest, in the rainbow, in the snow, in 
everything about him, nature was always telling him some- 
thing new of the goodness of God and forming excuses for 
the frail and erring." — -John Bigelow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

11 He who, from zone to zone, 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright." — To a Waterfowl. 

" Oh, no ! a thousand cheerful omens give 
Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. 
He who has trained the elements shall not live 
The slave of his own passions ; he whose eye 
Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, 
And in the abyss of brightness dares to span 
The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, 
In God's magnificent works his will shall scan — 
And love and peace shall make their paradise with man." 

— The Ages. 
" And when the hour of rest 
Comes, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine, 

Hushing its billowy breast — 
The quiet of that moment too is thine ; 

It breathes of Him who keeps 
The vast and helpless city while it sleeps." 

— Hymn of the City, 

11. Profound Meditation. — "The chief of our poets 
of meditation, based upon observation, are Bryant and Emer- 
son." — C. F. Richardson. 



572 BRYANT 

" With his inimitable pictures there is ever blended high 
speculation or a reflective strain of moral comment." — H. T. 
Tuckerman. 

" No boy, no young man, has ever understood his [Words- 
worth's] serene and lofty genius. He touches, he moves no 
man, until years have brought the philosophic mind. It 
comes to some early, to some late, to some not at all. It 
came to Bryant early, and it never left him. ' Thanatopsis ' 
struck the keynote of his genius, disclosed to him the growth 
and grandeur of his powers, and placed him for what he was, 
before all American poets, past, present, and to come." — R. 
H. Stoddard. 

11 But they [his juvenile efforts] do not as poetry bear wit- 
ness to the real bent of his genius, or even foreshadow the 
characteristics of his later writings — that minute and loving 
observation of nature which became with him almost a 
religion — or that profound meditative interpretation of the 
great movements of the universe which amounted to a kind 
of philosophy." — Parke Godwin. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Be it ours to meditate, 
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, 
And to the beautiful order of thy works 
Learn to confirm the order of our lives." 

r-A Forest Hymn. 

" Stainless worth, 
Such as the sternest age of virtue saw, 
Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth 
From the low modest shade, to light and bless the earth." 

— The Ages. 
" I would make 
Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit 
Patiently by the way-side, while I traced 
The mazes of the pleasant wilderness 
Around me. She should be my counsellor, 



BRYANT 573 

But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs 
Impulses from a deeper source than hers ; 
And there are motions in the mind of man 
That she must look upon with awe." 

— The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. 

12. Fondness for Apostrophe. — As a direct corollary 
or sequence of Bryant's elevation and high philosophy, we 
find him continually indulging in apostrophe. In less dignified 
hands, so frequent a use of this figure would become a blemish ; 
but it seems entirely in accord with the spirit of the man and 
of his poems. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But ye, who for the living lost 
That agony in secret bear, 
Who shall with soothing words accost 
The strength of your despair ? " 

— The Living Lost. 

" Thou dost mark them flushed with hope, 
As on the threshold of their vast designs 
Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st them down." 

— Hymn to Death. 

" Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 

Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart 
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart." — To a Waterfowl. 



LOWELL, 1810-1801 

Biographical Outline. — James Russell Lowell, born at 
Cambridge,. Mass., February 22, 1819 ; father a Congrega- 
tional minister, and both parents of English descent ; in 
1827 Lowell enters the school of William Wells, near " Elm- 
wood," as Lowell's home was called; he enters Harvard 
College as a Freshman in 1834, and forms there an intimate 
friendship with George B. Loring; he is only a fair student, 
but evinces an early love for literature, especially poetry ; he 
becomes secretary of the " Hasty Pudding Club," whose 
records were then kept in verse ; he is suspended for several 
months during his Senior year for neglect of studies ; he passes 
the interval studying under a tutor at Concord, where he 
meets Emerson and Thoreau ; he writes the poem for Class 
Day in 1838 (a satire on the Abolitionists and the Concord 
Transcendentalists), but is not allowed to read it because of 
his suspension, then in effect, but it is printed in pamphlet 
form for the class ; Lowell passes his final examinations and 
takes A.B. with his classmates in June, 1838. 

At first he thinks seriously of entering the ministry and then 
takes up the law ; by October, 1838, he is reading Black- 
stone " with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I may ; " 
he plans a dramatic poem on Cromwell, and regrets " being 
compelled to say farewell to the muses ; " in 1839 he writes, 
" I am schooling myself and shaping my theory of poetry ; " 
during 1839 he writes verses (" pottery ") for the Boston Post 
and for the Advertiser ; in December, 1839, he meets Miss 
Maria White, who " knows more poetry than anyone I am 
acquainted with; " he receives LL.B. from the Harvard Law 
School in the summer of 1840, and takes up the law moreseri- 

574 



LOWELL 575 

ously because of his father's heavy financial losses at that time 
and because of his engagement to Miss White in the autumn 
of [840 ; during 1839-40 he contributes verses to the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine and to the Southern Literary Messenger 
under his own name and under the pseudonym of " Hugh 
Percival ; " he publishes early in 1841 a collection of his 
poems entitled " A Year's Life," which wins some recogni- 
tion ; he spends the winter of 1842-43 in New York, under- 
going treatment by an oculist, and makes valuable acquaint- 
ances, including Page, the artist, and Briggs, the " Henry 
Franca" of the " Fable for Critics; " during 1841-42 he 
begins his life-long effort to secure international copyright, 
and contributes poetry to the Boston Miscellany, Graham'' s 
Magazine, and the Democratic Review, receiving from ten to 
thirty dollars for each poem ; in June, 1843, he writes to Lor- 
ing: "lam more and more assured every day that I shall yet 
do something that will keep my name (and perhaps my body) 
alive. My wings were never so strong as now. So hurrah 
for a niche and a laurel ! " 

He publishes his second volume of poems in December, 
1843, and resolves to devote himself to literature rather than 
law ; during 1844 he publishes " Conversations on Some of 
the Older Poets " (not since republished), and marries Maria 
White, another poet, in December of that year; they spend 
the winter in Philadelphia, where Lowell, doubtless influenced 
by his wife's strong abolitionist sentiments, becomes a con- 
tributor to the Freeman, an anti-slavery paper ; he returns to 
Cambridge in June, 1845 ; in 1846 becomes a regular con- 
tributor to the Anti-Slavery Standard at a salary of $500 
a year for a weekly contribution in prose or verse ; he con- 
tinues this connection till the spring of 1850, contributing 
many of the " Biglow Papers " and his poems on " Garrison," 
"Freedom," " Eurydice," "The Parting of the Ways," 
"Beaver Brook," and "The First Snowfall," the latter in 
memory of his first child, Blanche, who died in March, 1847, 



576 LOWELL 

aged fifteen months; during 1848 he collects and publishes 
the first series of " Biglow Papers," publishes " A Fable for 
Critics" (anonymously), and contributes " Sir Launfal " to 
the North American Review ; the entire first edition of the 
" Biglow Papers" is sold within a week after publication; 
during the winter of 1849-50 he publishes a collective edition 
of his poems, entertains Frederika Bremer, and loses his second 
child, Rose, then three years old, concerning whom he writes 
"After the Burial" (first published in 1869); he sails for 
Italy in July, 1851, hoping thus to improve his wife's failing 
health, and selling a part of his patrimony for the expenses of 
the journey ; he severs his connection with the Anti-Slavery 
Standard in April, 1850, saying : "It has never been a matter 
of dollars and cents between us, for I might have earned much 
more in other ways. . . . For every poem which has 
been printed in the Standard I could have got four times the 
money paid me by the committee [controlling the Stand- 
ard] ; " he loses his only son, then in his second year, at Rome 
in the spring of 1852, and returns to America in the following 
autumn j he writes little during his first foreign tour, saying, 
"I have been observing;" he contributes, in September, 
1853, his " Moosehead Journal" to Putnam's Magazine, in 
which are also published about that time several of Mrs. 
Lowell's poems ; his wife dies in October, 1853, leaving him 
one child, a daughter ; Lowell writes, " I understand now what 
is meant by ' the waters have gone over me ; ' " he spends the 
summer of 1854 at Beverly, Mass.; he prepares a series of lect- 
ures on the English poets during the autumn, and delivers the 
same at the Lowell Institute, in Boston, during the following 
winter, thus winning his spurs as a critic. 

In January, 1855, he is offered the chair of French and 
Spanish Literature at Harvard ("at a salary that will make 
me independent "), thus succeeding Ticknor and Longfenow ; 
he contributes " Cambridge Twenty Years Ago " to Ptitnam's 
Magazine in January, 1854, and " Pictures from Appledore " 



LOWELL 577 

to the Crayon for December, 1854; he accepts the Harvard 
chair on condition of being allowed a year in Europe for prep- 
aration ; he lectures in Wisconsin and other central Western 
States early in the spring of 1855, " going home with $600 in 
my pocket ; " he publishes ' ' Invito. Minerva ' ' in the Crayon for 
May, 1855, and sails for Paris in June ; he meets Leigh Hunt 
and Lowell's friend Story, the sculptor, in London, where 
Thackeray gives a dinner in Lowell's honor at the Garrick 
Club ; to Germany early in the autumn of 1855, stopping at 
Bruges, Antwerp, and the Hague, and settling at Dresden to 
study the German language and literature ; he remains at Dres- 
den, " working like a dog — no, a pig," passing a wretched win- 
ter, " out of health and out of spirits; " in March, 1856, he 
starts for Italy, and visits Bologna, Parma, Verona, Modena, 
Florence, and Naples; he recovers his health, and returns to 
Dresden in June, 1856 ; to Paris in July and back to America 
early in the autumn, to take up the duties of his professorship, 
which he held for seventeen years thereafter ; he gives up his 
home at Elm wood temporarily and goes to reside with his 
brother-in-law, Dr. Howe, in Cambridge; he gives two 
courses of lectures each year at Harvard ; in the summer of 
1857 he marries Miss Frances Dunlap, and in the following 
autumn becomes editor of the then newly established Atlantic 
Monthly ; he lectures in New York City in February, 1857 ; 
during 1858 he writes that he is " working often fifteen hours 
a day ; " in 1859 he begins a correspondence with Thomas 
Hughes ; he returns to Elmwood in the spring of 1861, and 
during the same year writes " The Washers of the Shroud ;" 
he begins the second series of " Biglow Papers," and resigns 
the editorship of the Atlantic in May, 1861 ; he gives up 
the "Biglow Papers" in June, 1862, saying, "It's no use 
my brain must lie fallow a while." 
Early in 1864 he becomes joint editor of the North Ameri- 
can Review with Professor C. E. Norton ; he edits a volume of 
ft Old Dramatists" in August, 1864 ; in July, 1865, he writes 
37 



578 LOWELL 

and reads at the Harvard memorial exercises his " Com- 
memoration Ode " — "so rapt with the fervor of conception 
as I have not been these ten years; " but, a little later, he is 
" ashamed at having been again tempted into thinking that I 
could write poetry, a delusion from which I have been toler- 
ably free these dozen years ; " he continues his studies in Ger- 
man literature in 1865, but chafes at the drudgery of his pro- 
fessorship, saying, " If I can sell some of my land and slip my 
neck out of this collar again, I shall be a man. . . . My 
professorship is wearing me out;" concerning his financial 
receipts from his magazine articles, he writes in December, 
1865, " For some years I have had twice fifty dollars for what- 
ever I write and three or four times fifty for a long poem ; " he 
becomes a contributor to the Nation in 1866, and begins a cor- 
respondence with Leslie Stephen ; he prints his last " Biglow 
Paper" in the Atlantic for May, 1866, and publishes during 
that year a complete series of the " Biglow Papers" with a 
long introduction on " Yankeeisms " ("getting $820 for my 
last six weeks' work ") ; he writes " The Nightingale in the 
Study" in 1867, and continues his "annual dissatisfaction" 
of lecturing at Harvard ; in October, 1868, he publishes a new 
volume of old poems entitled " Under the Willows;" during 
the summer of 1869 he writes his long poem " The Cathedral " 
(published in the Atlantic for January, 1870) ; in the winter of 
1870 he visits Washington, stopping to lecture at Baltimore ; 
during the summer of 1870 he studies old French metrical 
romances, averaging twelve hours a day, and writes, "I long 
to give myself to poetry again before I get so old that I have 
only strength and no music left;" he entertains Thomas 
Hughes at Elmwood in the autumn ; in July, 187 1, he sells 
" my birthright [part of the land at Elmwood] for a mess of 
pottage," and writes to Leslie Stephen, "It will give me 
about $5,000 a year, and Mabel [his daughter] about $400 
more;" he retains the Elmwood house with two acres; he 
publishes "Among My Books" in 1870 and "My Study 



LOWELL 579 

Windows " in 1871 ; he resigns the Harvard professorship in 

1872, writing to Miss Norton, "It takes a good while to 
slough off the effect of seventeen years of pedagogy; " he 
publishes his essay on Dante, and sails for Europe the third 
time in 1872 ; he lands at Queenstown, and visits Dublin and 
Chester en route to London ; thence to Paris ("picking up 
books here and there"), where he meets Emerson ; in June, 

1873, he receives D.C.L. from Oxford, and leaves Paris, 
making a tour of Belgium, Holland, and Germany, and 
reaching Venice in October; thence to Florence ; at Rome, 
in January and February, 1874, and to Naples in March; 
while at Rome he writes his " Elysian Argosy" (published in 
the Atlantic for May, 1874); back to Paris in May, 1874, 
and to America in July. 

During 1875 he publishes in the Atlantic \\\% essay on Spen- 
ser and his Centennial Ode, " Under the Old Elm," and in 
book form the second series of "Among My Books," con- 
taining the essays on Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Shelley, 
and Keats ; he lectures again at Harvard, and writes for the 
Nation two poems entitled " The World's Fair, 1876," and 
" Tempora muta?itur" both of which excite some popular 
condemnation ; he becomes actively interested in political 
reform in April, 1876, and is made, successively, a delegate 
to the State and national conventions — the latter at Cincin- 
nati, where Hayes was nominated ; he writes his " Ode for the 
Fourth of July, 1876," read at the Philadelphia Centennial 
Celebration ; he declines repeated popular invitations to run 
for Congress, is made a Presidential elector, and continues 
lecturing at Harvard in the autumn of 1876 ; he visits Wash- 
ington in February, 1877, stopping at Baltimore to give a 
course of lectures at Johns Hopkins University ; he is offered 
by President Hayes the embassy to Austria and afterward that 
to Germany, but declines both. 

In June, 1877, he is appointed Minister to Spain, and sails 
thither in July, visiting Paris and London en route and reach- 



580 LOWELL 

ing Madrid in August ; he finds his ministerial duties unex- 
pectedly heavy, and suffers from the gout (as he had suffered 
for years) ; he visits Seville, Cordova, and Granada during 
the winter of 1877-78 ; in the spring of 1878 he makes a two 
months' tour through Southern France, Italy, and Greece, 
returning to Madrid in July ; he entertains General Grant 
therein October; on January 19, 1870, he receives his ap- 
pointment as Minister to England, and accepts on condition 
of a two months' interim; in the autumn of 1881 he makes 
another tour through Germany and Italy, as far as Rome, 
returning to London in January, 1882 ; during 1884 he is 
elected Lord Rector of St. Andrew's, and receives a doctor's 
degree from the University of Edinburgh and LL.D. from 
Harvard; he delivers his address on "Democracy" at Bir- 
mingham in October, 1884, and makes several other public 
addresses in England, about this time, winning great popu- 
larity there ; he incurs the hostility of Irish-American poli- 
ticians by certain official action during 1884; during 1885 
he loses his second wife in London, and is recalled by Presi- 
dent Cleveland, reaching America in June ; unable to bear 
the associations at Elmwood, he settles at Southborough, 
Mass., with his daughter and her family ; he publishes 
"Democracy and other Addresses" in 1886, and revisits 
London during the summer; he receives great public honors, 
visits Gladstone, and returns in the autumn ; in November, 
1886, he delivers an address on the 250th anniversary of the 
founding of Harvard ; in 1887 he is receiving $2,000 a year 
from his general copyrights; he spends the summer of 1887 
in England ; during 1888 he re-edits and publishes his poems, 
attends the anniversary of the University of Bologna as Har- 
vard's representative, and spends the summer in England, at 
Whitby; he is at Whitby again in 1889, returning to 
America in October and settling with his daughter at his old 
Elmwood home ; he is severely ill during the spring of 1890 ; 
he dies at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. 



LOWELL 581 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON LOWELL. 

Stedman, E. C, " Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co., 304-348. 
Curtis, G. W., " Orations and Addresses." New York, 1894, Harper, 

3: 367-398. 
Haweis, H. R., "American Humorists." London, 1883, Chatto & 

Windus, 73-134- 
Underwood, F. H., "James Russell Lowell, the Poet and the Man." 

Boston, 1893, Lee & Shepard. 
Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 

2 : 186-204. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 

Fields, 68-71. 
Whipple, E. P., "Outlooks on Society." Boston, 1888, Ticknor, 

306-314. 
Whipple, E. P., " American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 78-79. 
Bungay, G. W., " Off- Hand Sketches." New York, 1854, Dewitt & 

Douglass, 394-400. 
Underwood, F. H., "James Russell Lowell, a Biographical Sketch." 

Boston, 1882, Osgood & Co. 
James, H., "Essays in London," etc. New York, 1893, Harper, 44-80. 
Stead, W., " Character Sketches." London, 1892, Hodder &Stoughton, 

120-134. 
Taylor, B., "Critical Essays." New York, 1880, Putnam, 298-301. 
Nichol, J., " American Literature." Edinburgh, 1855, Black, 220-412. 
Wilkinson, W. C, "Free Lance." New York, 1874, Mason, 50. 
Poe, E. A., "Works." New York, 1855, Redfield, 3: 275-282. 
Lowell, J. R., "A Fable for Critics" (Lowell's Works). Cambridge, 

1892, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 3: 1-95. 
" Lowell, J. R., Letters of " (C. E. Norton). New York, 1894, Harper. 
Brown, E. E., " Life of J. R. Lowell." Boston, 1887, Ticknor. 
Welsh, A. H., " Development of English Literature." Chicago, 1882, 

Griggs, 2: 390-393- 
Curtis, G. W., "Homes of American Authors." New York, 1853, 

Putnam, 349-366. 
Underwood, F. H., " Builders of American Literature." Boston, 1893, 

Lee & Shepard. 
North American Review, 52 : 452-466 (G. S. Hillard) ; 58 : 283-299 

(C. G. Felton); 66: 458-482 (F. Bowen) ; 153: 460-467 (R. H. 

Stoddard); 68: 182-190 (F. Bowen). 



582 LOWELL 

North British Review, 46 : 472-482. 

Scribner's Magazine, 4 : 75-86 and 227-237 and 339-345 (W. C. Wil- 
kinson). 

Harper's Magazine, 62: 252-273 (Underwood); 86: 846-850 (C. E. 
Norton). 

Century Magazine, 2: 97-112 (Stedman); 21 : 113-118 (S. E. Wood- 
berry) ; 21 : 1 19-120 (J. Benton) ; 2 : 97-1 n (E. C. Stedman). 

The Literary World, 16: 217-225(0. D. Warner). 

Fortnightly Review, 38: 78-89 (H. D. Traill); 50: 310-324 (Sidney 
Low). 

The Nineteenth Century, 17: 988-1008 (G. B. Smith). 

The Spectator, 58 : 744-745 (H. D. Traill). 

The Nation, 53: u6-n8(T. W. Higginson); 57: 488-489 (T. W. Hig- 
ginson) ; 34 : 438- (E. L. Godkin). 

The Critic, 9: 75-76 (Editor) ; 11 : 85-96 (T. B. Aldrich) ; 16: 82-83 
and 291-292 (Editor). 

Chicago Dial, 7: 241-243 (M. B. Anderson); 12: 133-135 (O. F 
Emerson). 

Andover Revieiv, 16 : 294-300 (Editor). 

The Arena, 14: 504-529 (H. Garland); 9: 705 (W. J Savage). 

Blackwood' 's Magazine, 150: 454-460 and 589-590 (W. W Story). 

Contemporary Review, 60: 477-498 (F. H. Underwood). 

Literary World, 22: 290-291 (J. W. Parsons). 

New England Magazine, 5: 183-192 (E. E, Hale). 

Unitarian Review, 36 : 436-455 (J. W. Chadwick). 

Good Words, 28: 521-527 (F. H. Underwood). 

Revierv of Reviews, 4: 287-291 (J. F. Jamieson) and 291-294 (C. T. 
Winchester) and 294-296 (R. D. Jones) and 296-310 (W. T. Stead). 

The Spectator, 66 : 693-694. 

Gentleman's Magazine, 15 : 464-487 (Haweis). 

Atlantic Monthly, 69: 35-50 (H. James); 70: 744-757 (W. J Still- 
man); 56: 263-265(0 W. Holmes). 

Our Day, 8: 347-356 and 444-453 (F. H. Underwood). 

LippincotVs Magazine, 50: 534-541 (R. H. Stoddard) 

Fortnightly Revieiv, 44 : 79-85 (H. D. Traill). 

Critic, 8: 151 (G. E. Woodberry). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Culture— Erudition — Allusiveness.— If Spenser is 
"the poet's poet," Lowell is certainly the poet of the man of 



LOWELL 583 

culture. While he is intelligible and delightful to the ordi- 
nary reader, his pages abound in allusions and evidences of 
scholarship that delight the more cultivated classes. The 
pleasure felt on recognizing the force of some allusion, per- 
haps hidden to the ordinary mind, is doubtless akin to that 
felt at guessing some conundrum or at being recognized in 
company by some eminent personage. 

" Lowell was a scholar in the best sense of the word, pos- 
sessing a thorough knowledge of English literature and criti- 
cally conversant with other literatures as well — the classics of 
Greece and Rome and the classics of Spain and Italy, France 
and Germany. A scholar not a pedant, he mastered his 
learning, and it profited him in the large horizons which it 
disclosed to his spiritual vision and the felicity and dignity 
which it imparted to his style. Gentleman and scholar in all 
that he wrote, there is that in his writing which declares a 
greater intellect than it reveals. . . . He is regarded 
not only as a man of letters, but as a fine exemplar of cult- 
ure, and of a culture so generous as to be thought supra- 
American. . . . We count Lowell as a specimen not of 
foreign but of home culture, and especially of our Eastern 
type. . . . Lowell's culture has not bred in him an un- 
due respect for polish and for established ways and forms. 
Precisely the opposite. Much learning and a fertile mind 
incline him to express minute shades of his fancy by a most 
iconoclastic use of words and prefixes. He is not a writer for 
dullards, and to read him enjoyably is a point in evidence of 
a liberal education. ... A pedant quotes for the sake 
of a display of his learning ; Lowell, because he has mastered 
everything connected with his theme. . . . The fine 
thing about Lowell was his plentiful and original genius. 
This was so rich that he never was compelled, like many 
writers, to hoard his thoughts or be miserly with his bright 
sayings. When warmed by companionship and in talk he 
gave full play to his spontaneity, and said enough witty and 



584 LOWELL 

epigrammatic and poetic things to set np a dozen small talkers 
or writers." — E. C Stedman. 

" His love and mastery of books was extraordinary, and 
his devotion to study so relentless that in those earlier years 
he studied sometimes fourteen hours in the day, and pored 
over books until his sight seemed to desert him. 
Probably no American student was so deeply versed in the 
old French romance ; none knew Dante and the Italian more 
profoundly ; German literature was familiar to him, and per- 
haps even Ticknor, in his own domain of Spanish lore, was 
not more a master than Lowell. . . . His extraordinary 
knowledge, whether of out-door or of in-door derivation, and 
the racy humor in which his knowledge was fused, overflowed 
his conversation. There is no historic circle of wits and 
scholars ... to which Lowell's abundance would not 
have contributed a golden drop and his glancing wit a rep- 
artee." — George Williai?i Curtis. 

"Few readers know what deep and rich philosophy, what 
fruits of thought and culture, are to be found in some of 
Lowell's works. . . . If our literature shall ever fade and 
die in the coming centuries, and some future reader shall 
stumble upon [his] books, he will easily and excusably 
wax highly enthusiastic over the unquestionable wealth of 
thought therein discovered. . . . He was a scholar 
of thorough culture in more than one field." — C. F. Rich- 
ardson. 

" The loss which America sustained in the death of Mr. 
Lowell in August, 1891, and of Mr. Curtis in August, 1892, 
was the loss of the two men who, during their generation, 
had most truly represented the ideals of American culture and 
ci ti zenshi p. " — Charles Eliot Norton. 

" The poet's mind had long dealt with abstruse ideas, and 
was fertile in recondite allusion ; he never seemed to think 
that even fairly read people might need a clue to his meaning. 
Lowell is one of the most favorable examples of American 



LOWELL 585 

culture. He has profited by the literatures of all nations, but 
he has been the disciple of no one literary master ; . . 
he is eminent among scholars and capable, discreet, and dis- 
tinguished among public men. . . . The best things in 
all tongues naturally gravitated to him ; and it is difficult for 
any but the most curiously learned to say whether he seemed 
more at home with the philosophic authors of Germany, the 
great poet of Italy, the immortal romancer of Spain, the brill- 
iant wit and classic finish of the French, or with the long line 
of poets, chroniclers, and thinkers of our own home. 
There is nothing in Lowell's odes obscure to a well-trained 
mind ; but, unfortunately, all minds are not so trained as to 
dissolve his thought from out the richly incrusted diction. So 
it remains that the stronger poems of Lowell are beyond the 
comprehension of all but cultivated readers. . . . Low- 
ell's prose is like cloth-of-gold — too splendid and too cum- 
brous for every-day wear." — F. H. Underwood. 

" Mr. Lowell is the last person, . . . to scorn or deny 
the tributaries which have washed down their many golden 
sands into his bright lake. . . . Lowell's poetry has 
simply gone on perfecting itself in form and finish till now he 
is as complete a specimen of ' a literary man's poet ' — of the 
consummate artist of expression — as it would be easy to find 
in a summer day's hunt through a well-filled library. Around 
the stormy topics of war, slavery, and politics plays an inces- 
sant summer lightning of literary, antiquarian, and instructive 
social and domestic twitter." — H, R. Haweis. 

At the time of Lowell's death, a writer in the London 
Times declared : " With him there passes away one of the 
very few Americans who were the equals of any son of the old 
world — of any Frenchman or any Englishman — in that inde- 
finable mixture of qualities which we sum up, for want of a 
better word, under the name of culture. . . . Wherever 
official business was not too heavy, he invariably read for a 
minimum of four hours a day. This did not include the time 



586 LOWELL 

that he gave to ephemeral literature ; it was the time that he 
spent in the serious reading of books, generally old books." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Elfish daughter of Apollo ! 

Thee, from thy father stolen and bound 
To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, 
Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, 

Then, perfidious ! having got 
Thee in the net of his devices, 
Sold thee into endless slavery, 
Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 
Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear 
His likeness in thy golden hair ; 
Thee, by nature wild and wavery, 
Palpitating, evanescent 
As the shade of Dian's crescent, 
Life, motion, gladness, everywhere ! " 

— Hymn to My Fire. 

11 When next upon the page I chance, 
Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, 
And whirl my fancy where it sees 
Pan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, 
Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, 
Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 
' What mean,' I ask, ' these sudden joys ? 
This fe'eling fresher than a boy's ? 
What makes this line, familiar long, 
New as the first bird's April song? ' 
I could, with sense illumined thus, 
Clear doubtful texts in Aeschylus ! " 

— The Pregnant Comment. 

11 Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made ; 
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, 
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ; 



LOWELL 587 

Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, 

And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk ; 

And, though 't was a step into which he had driven her, 

He somehow or other had never forgiven her ; 

Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, 

Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, 

And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over, 

By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. 

1 My case is like Dido's ' he sometimes remark'd ; 

* When I last saw my love, she was fairly embark'd.' " 

— A Fable for Critics. 

2. Independence — Sincerity — Manliness. — From 
the beginning to the end of his career, Lowell exemplified by 
contrast the force of his own stirring lines : 

" They are slaves who dare not be 
In the right with two or three." 

Holmes spoke of Lowell on the latter's seventieth birthday 
as one 

" Who, born a poet, grasps his trenchant rhymes 
And strikes unshrinking at the nation's crimes ! " 

" He never feared and never shrinked the obligation to be 
positive. Firm and liberal critic as he was, and with noth- 
ing of party spirit in his utterance save in the sense that his 
sincerity was his party, -his mind had little affinity with super- 
fine estimates and shades and tints of opinion : when he felt 
at all he felt altogether." — Henry James. 

" His patriotic distinction, and his ennobling influence 
upon the character and lives of generous American youth, 
gave him power to speak with more authority than any living 
American for the intellect and conscience of America. . . . 
As he allowed no church or sect to dictate his religious views 
or to control his daily conduct, so he permitted no party to 
direct his political action. He was a Whig, an Abolitionist, 



588 LOWELL 

a Republican, a Democrat, according to his conception of the 
public exigency." — George William Curtis. 

"The war poems were thrilling, concentrating the pro- 
found emotions of a nation. There was so noble a fervor in 
them, and all were so distinctively elevated in tone, as to 
challenge for the America from which they sprang a greater 
affection and reverence than many in this country had been 
previously wont to pay her. . . . Although Mr. Lowell 
was in antagonism with the feeling of the majority of his 
countrymen upon these matters [the invasion of Mexico and 
the Slavery Question], he did not flinch from what he deemed 
to be his duty, but lashed out against the popular notions 
with vigor. He had the courage to be in the right when it 
was not so easy as it is now." — G. B. Smith. 

" Lowell always produced the impression that he was in 
himself greater than anything he had done, and those who 
listened to him looked for a crescendo in his career. 
["The Present Crisis " and other poems] gave hope for up- 
lifting the lowly by active sympathy; they rebuked the jar- 
ring sects with parables of mutual forbearance and Christian 
love. ... In Lowell's verses there was something of 
Wordsworth's simplicity, something of Tennyson's sweetness 
and musical flow, and something more of the manly earnest- 
ness of the Elizabethan poets." — F. H. Underwood. 

li The sort of high thinking and plain speaking which did 
more than anything else to remedy this state of things [Sla- 
very] and to blow the liberation spark into a second flame, is 
to be found in [his] . . . utterance. . . . Never 
did any man trust himself more unreservedly to the guidance 
of a ' blazing principle.' . . . Behind the mark is a 
man terribly in earnest — but not over a crotchet — over a pas- 
sion which he knows sleeps in the heart of all, and must be 
aroused — the love of freedom." — H. R. Haweis. 



LOWELL 589 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
Come of fathers brave and free, 
If there breathe on earth a slave, 
Are ye truly free and brave ? 

They are slaves who fear to speak 

For the fallen and the weak ; 

They are slaves who will not choose 

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse 

Rather than in silence shrink 

From the truth they needs must think." 

— Stanzas on Freedom. 

'* Then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched 
crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be 

just ; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands 

aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied." 

— The Present Crisis. 

tl I do not fear to follow out the truth, 
Albeit along the precipice's edge. 
Let us speak plain ; there is more force in names 
Than most men dream of ; and a lie may keep 
Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk 
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name." 

— A Glance Behind the Curtain. 

3. Didacticism. — In his ''Fable for Critics," Lowell 
says justly of himself : 

" There's Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, 

The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 

Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching." 



590 LOWELL 

"Lowell's 'progressive' verse often was fuller of opinion 
than beauty, of eloquence than passion. . . . The 
thought, the purpose — these are the main ends with Lowell, 
though prose or metre suffer for it. . . . His doctrines 
and reflections, in the midst of an ethereal distillation, at times 
act like the single drop of prose which, as he reports a saying 
of Landor to Wordsworth, precipitates the whole. 
If Whittier and Lowell, like the Lake Poets before them, be- 
came didactic through moral earnestness, it none the less 
aided to inspire them. Their verses advanced a great cause, 
and, as the years went by, grew in quality — perhaps as surely 
as that of poets who, in youth, reject all but artistic consider- 
ations." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Song, satire, and parable — more and more as he lives and 
ponders and pours forth — are all so many pulpit illustrations 
or platform pleas." — H. R. Haweis. 

" The primary quality of Lowell's intellect, so far as one is 
able to understand it from an examination of his literary work 
as a whole, was not so much that of the poet or the critic or 
the essayist as the preacher. This was the vocation — the task 
for which he had a ' Call ; ' and he felt it so himself, and 
knew, as men do in such cases, that it was at once the source 
of his weakness and his strength. . . . It is perfectly 
true that Lowell's ascent of the Parnassian steep was somewhat 
seriously impeded by the republicanism, Neo-Calvinism, Old 
Liberalism, Humanitarianism, Meliorism, and the rest of the 
formidable spiritual baggage which he had to haul behind 
him. . . . The preacher in him, during at least the 
earlier and more characteristic period of his work, was more 
than the scholar, more than the critic or the poet. 
Much of Lowell's teaching is like Carlyle's, a discourse on the 
text — ' work while you have the light.' " — Sidney Low. 

" There is a high aim and a definite moral purpose in the 
' Biglow Papers.' . . . His poems have body as well 
as spirit ; they touch the heart as well as stimulate the intel- 



LOWELL 591 

lect ; they inculcate nobleness, purity, and brotherly love, 
and tend to raise the soul above sordid views of life." — 
F. H. Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" New occasions teach new duties ; time makes ancient good 
uncouth ; 

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast 
of Truth ; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! We ourselves must pil- 
grims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 
winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted 
Key." — The Present Crisis. 

" Where'er a single slave doth pine, 
Where'er one man may help another — 
Thank God for such a birthright, brother ! 
That spot of earth is thine and mine ; 
There is the true man's birthplace grand ! 
His is a world-wide fatherland ! " — The Fathe?'land. 

" Life may be given in many ways, 

And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as in the field, 

So bountiful is Fate ; 

But thus to stand beside her, 

When craven churls deride her, 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 

This shows, methinks, God's plan 

And measure of stalwart man, 

Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 

Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs." 

— Commemoration Ode 

4. Appreciation of Nature. — "There is a beautiful 
feeling in his poems of nature. . . . The charm of Low- 



592 LOWELL 

ell's outdoor verse lies in its spontaneity ; he loves nature 
with a child-like joy, her boon companion, finding even in 
her illusions welcome and relief, just as one gives himself up 
to a story or a play, and will not be a doubter. Here he 
never ages, and he beguiles you and me to share his joy. It 
does me good to see a poet who knows a bird or flower as 
one friend knows another, yet loves it for itself alone. 
What Lowell loves most in nature are the trees and their 
winged habitants and the flowers that grow untended. 
Give him a touch of Mother Earth, a breath of free air, one 
flash of sunshine, and he is no longer a book-man and a 
brooder ; his blood runs riot with the Spring ; this inborn, 
poetic elasticity is the best gift of the gods. Lowell trusts in 
Nature, and she gladdens him. . . . There is little of the 
ocean in his verse ; the sea-breeze brings fewer messages to 
him than to Longfellow and Whittier. His sense of inland 
nature is all the more alert ; for him the sweet security of 
meadow paths and orchard closes. He has the pioneer heart, 
to which a homestead farm is dear and familiar, and native 
woods and waters are an intoxication." — E. C. Stedman. 
During Lowell's life Holmes wrote of him : 

" He is the poet who can stoop to read 
The secret hidden in a wayside weed ; 
Whom June's warm breath with child-like rapture fills, 
Whose spirit ' dances with the daffodils. ' " 

And after the death of Lowell his brother-poet sings again : 

" How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat 

Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours ! 
Where shall we find an eye like thine to greet 

Spring's earliest foot-prints on her opening flowers? 
Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret 

For him who read the secrets they unfold ? 
Shall the proud spangles of the field forget 

The verse that lent new glory to their gold ? " 



LOWELL 593 

" His love and knowledge of nature were not those of a 
poet alone, not mere Words worthi an sentiment, but such as 
showed, as Darwin long afterward said, to Lowell's great dis- 
pleasure, that he had in him the making of a naturalist." — 
Charles Eliot Norton. 

" So acute and trained an observer of nature, so sympathetic 
a friend of birds and flowers, so sensitive to the influence and as- 
pects of out-of-door life, that Darwin with frank admiration said 
that he was born to be a naturalist." — George William Curtis. 

" He used to enter upon the long walks which have aided 
in making him one of the poets of nature with the keenest 
zest. There was no quicker eye for a bird or squirrel, a rare 
flower or bush, and no more accurate ear for the songs or the 
commoner sounds of the forest. ... In landscape he 
sees the natural object and he paints it ; but through it he 
sees also its significance and its ideal relations. . . . Low- 
ell apparently sympathizes with Chaucer in his joy in nature 
and in his pleasure in the study of character. . . . When 
out for a walk nothing escaped him — not the plumage of a 
bird, the leafage of a tree, the color of a blossom, nor a trait 
upon a human countenance. He knew almost every bird by 
its note, its color, and its flight. He knew where flowers 
grew and when they should appear. All this knowledge might 
have been possessed by a person with little sentiment ; but it 
was with the eye of love that Lowell looked upon the world." 
— F. H. Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 
The eyes thou givest me 

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 
Not in mid June the golden cuirassed bee 
38 



594 LOWELL 

Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
In the white lily's breezy tent, 
His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst." 

— To the Dandelion. 

" Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
Who cannot in their various incomes share, 
From every season drawn, of shade and light, 
Who sees in them but levels brown and bare ; 
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free 
On them its largess of variety ; 

For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare." 

— An Indian- Summer Reverie. 

" Once on a time there was a pool 

Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool 

And spotted with cow-lilies garish, 

Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. 

Alders the creaking red-wings sink on, 

Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln 

Hedged round the unassailed seclusion 

Where musk-rats piled their cells Carthusian, 

And many a moss-embroidered log, 

The wintering-place of summer frog, 

Slept and decayed with patient skill, 

As wintering places sometimes will." — Festina Lente. 

5. Skill in Portraiture. — In spite of Poe's virulent re- 
joinder, the " Fable for Critics " has taken its place in the 
treasure-house of our national literature as generally a fair and 
good-natured series of portraits. . . . The portraits in 
Fitz Adam's Story are more like those of the immortal Can- 
terbury pilgrims than any we have had since. 

" Lowell's portrait of Lincoln in the ' Commemoration 
Ode ' is delineated in a manner that gives this poet a pre- 
eminence among those who capture likeness in enduring verse, 
that we award to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon 
the canvas." — E. C. Sledman. 

"We may not always agree with him in his estimate of 



LOWELL 595 

Dryden, for example — it is difficult to do so — but there he is, 
with an enviable power of analysis and a capacity to enter 
into the very souls of some of our cherished literary gods, 
which we can but envy." — G. B. Smith. 

" Fond of frontiers-men and their natural ways, he puts 
them in a line — ' The shy, wood-wandering brood of charac- 
ter.' He paints the landlord of the rustic inn. The picture 
seems as deep-lined and lasting as one of Chaucer's. Under- 
neath the fun and riot [in " A Fable for Critics"] we find 
outlined portraits and swift estimates, which, though not al- 
ways wholly just, are of marvellous acuteness and force. Some 
of the sketches — for instance, those of Emerson, Whittier, 
and Hawthorne — in their general faithfulness and power of 
discrimination are the best ever made of these men either in 
verse or prose. ' A Fable for Critics ' is the wittiest 

of literary satires and the most faithful of caricatures." — F. H. 
Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 



a 



No eye like his to value horse or cow, 
Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow ; 
He could foretell the weather at a word, 
He knew the haunt of every beast and bird ; 

Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you'd scarce meet 
A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and sweet ; 
Generous by birth, and ill at saying ' no,' 
Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe ; 
Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade, 
And give away ere nightfall all he made." 

— Fitz Adam s Story. 

11 His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 



596 LOWELL 

Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

— Commemoration Ode. 

" There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified 
As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 
Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights 
With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 
Like being stirred up by the very North Pole. 

If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
There is nothing in that which is grand in its way ; 
He is almost the one of your poets that knows 
How much force, strength, and dignity lie in repose ; 
If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar 
His thought's modest fulness by going too far." 

— A Fable for Critics. 

6. Humorous— Satire— Brilliancy. — An English crit- 
ic well defines all humor as " a subtle blending of the serious 
with the comic," and adds: "But the combination of a 
deep and generous sympathy with a keen perception of the 
ludicrous is the substratum of the finest kind of humor ; and 
it is that which enables ' Biglow ' to pass without any sense of 
discord from pure satire into strains of genuine poetry." 

" Verse made only as satire belongs to a lower order. Of 
such there are various didactic specimens. But wit has an imag- 
inative side, and Humor springs like Iris — all smiles and tears. 
The wit of poets often has been the faculty that ripened last, 
the overflow of their strength and experience. In the ' Biglow 
Papers,' wit and humor are united as in a composition of high 
grade. . . . Lowell has been compared to Butler, but 
'Hudibras,' whether as poetry or historical satire, is vastly 
below the master-work of the New England idyllist. 
My own explanation of things which annoy us in his lof- 



LOWELL 597 

tier pieces is that his every-day genius is that of wit and hu- 
mor. . . . Here [in " The Biglow Papers "] was now seen 
that maturity of genius, of which humor is a flower, reveal- 
ing the sound, kind man within the poet. . . . The 
jesting is far removed from that clownish gabble which, if it 
still increases, will shortly add another to the list of offences 
that make killing no murder." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Humor of the purest strain, but humor in deadly earnest. 
In its course, as in that of a cyclone, it swept all before it — 
the press, the church, criticism, scholarship — . . . the 
Mexican war, pleas for slavery, and public men." — George 
William Curtis. 

" Mr. Lowell is unquestionably a born humorist. He pos- 
sesses a humor of thought which is at once broad and subtle ; 
his humor of expression is his American birthright." — H. D. 
Traill. 

''They [the "Biglow Papers"] were forcible with the 
humor which distinguishes great men who keep their eyes and 
ears open. But besides this common-sense and this humor, 
there were in the ' Biglow Papers ' a wisdom and wit which 
were equally forcible and more rare." — R. H. Stoddard. 

"The ' Fable for Critics ' affords ample illustration of the 
liveliness and sparkling spontaneity of his wit. . . . His 
wit was not as kindly as it was ready ; his humor was always 
genial." — Charles Eliot Norton. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' 
Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 
Ef it's right to go amowin' 
Feller-men like oats an' rye ? 
I dunno but wut it's pooty 
Trainin' round in bobtail coats, — 
But it's curus Christian dooty 
This 'ere cuttin folk's throats. 



598 LOWELL 

I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong 

Agin wrong in the abstract, for thet kind o' wrong 

Is oilers unpop'lar, an' never gits pitied, 

Because it's a crime no one ever committed ; 

But he mustn't be hard on partickler sins, 

Coz then he'll be kickin' the peoples' own shins." 

— Biglow Papers . 

" The furniture stood round with such an air, 
There seemed an old maid's ghost in every chair, 
Which looked as it had scuttled to its place 
And pulled extempore a Sunday face, 
Too smugly proper for a world of sin, 
Like boys on whom the minister comes in. 
The table, fronting you with icy stare, 
Strove to look witless that its legs were bare, 
While the black sofa with its horsehair pall 
Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral." 

— Fitz Adams Story. 

" Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, 
Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias 
Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear 
Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year ; 
Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 
Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions. 
In this way our hero got safely to college, 
Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge ; 
A reading-machine, always wound up and going, 
He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing." 

— A Fable for Critics. 

7. Wit. — As distinguished from humor, we mean, by this 
quality, that form of mental excitement and pleasure that 
is due mainly to a perception of the incongruous. Lowell's 
poems abound in grotesquely absurd situations and relations. 
His wit also appears in his incomparable puns and in the fan- 
tastic double rhymes, of which he is such a consummate mas- 
ter. The "Fable for Critics" has been called "a hand- 
gallop of loose verses. ' ' 



LOWELL 599 

il The ' Fable ' is as full of puns as a pudding of plums. 
The good ones are the best of their kind, strung together like 
beads, and the bad ones are so ' atrocious ' as to be quite as 
amusing. . . . No poem of the kind in the language 
equals it in the two aspects of vivid genius and riotous 
fun. . . . Regarded as a mere repository of fun, 
it is inimitable; but the author's are edged tools rather 
than playthings, and they have been felt through the long 
struggle. . . . One might believe that the brilliant rail- 
lery which Lowell afterward turned upon the supporters of 
slavery had its origin in a reaction from the monotonous ora- 
tory of some of his associates. The public was found to be 
keenly sensitive to the coruscation of wit, and sorely vulner- 
able to the arrows of ridicule. ... Its [" A Fable 
for Critics"] grotesque macaronic lines, with impossible 
rhymes, its exhaustless store of double-shotted puns, its keen 
analysis and common-sense, make it one of the most enjoy- 
able of satires. . . . The lines are as full of good- 
humored counsel as of pungent wit. . . . The sharp 
thrust in rustic phrase, the native wit, and the irony that 
played upon the lines [of "Hosea Biglow "], making them 
like live electric wires, produced a combination of mirth and 
conviction wholly new. . . . [" A Fable for Critics"] is 
the gay humor of a youth in the freedom of an anonymous 
pasquinade — revelling in puns, clashing unexpected and all 
but impossible rhymes like cymbals, tossing off grotesque epi- 
thets and comparisons, and going in a break-neck canter like 
a race-horse let loose. . . . Wit was as natural to him as 
breathing, and when the mood was on he could no more 
avoid seeing and signalling puns than an inebriate could help 
seeing double, but the wit and the puns were not the end and 
aim of his talk. . . . Lowell's creations are humorous, 
though some of them scatter witticisms like rice at a wed- 
ding. . . . It is not risking much to say that it [" The 
Biglow Papers "] is the wittiest and best-sustained satire in 



600 LOWELL 

English. ... It must be repeated, by way of explana- 
tion, that, from the first fly-leaf to the colophon, this is the 
only complete and perfect piece of grotesque comedy in ex- 
istence. . . . Materials for any number of Hoods exist 
in it. The wit of Hosea Biglow is the native wit 

of Lowell — instantaneous as lightning — and Hosea's common 
sense is Lowell's birthright." — F H. Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, 
And note what an average graveyard contains ; 

There are slave-drivers quietly whipped underground ; 
There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound ; 
There card-players wait till the last trump be played, 
There all the choice spirits get finally laid ; 
There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth ; 
There men without legs get their six feet of earth ; 
There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in his case ; 
There seekers of office are sure of a place. 



Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his 
Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, 

Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark 

From Vaterland's battles just won — in the Park, 

Who the happy profession of martyrdom take 

Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak ; 

Sixty-two second Washingtons ; two or three Jacksons : 

And so many everythings-else that it racks one's 

Poor memory too much to continue the list, 

Especially now they no longer exist." — A Fable for Critics. 

" He called an architect in counsel ; 
' I want,' said he, ' a — you know what, 
(You are a builder, I am Knott,) 
A thing complete from chimney-pot 
Down to the very groundsel ; 



LOWELL 60 1 

Here's a half acre of good land ; 

Just have it nicely mapped and planned 

And make your workmen drive on ; 

Meadow there is, and upland too, 

And I should like a water-view, 

D' you think you could contrive one ? 

(Perhaps the pump and trough would do, 

If painted a judicious blue) 

The woodland I've attended to ;' 

(He meant three pines stuck up askew, 

Two dead ones and a live one.) 

' A pocket-full of rocks, 't would take 

To build a house of free-stone, 

But then it is not hard to make 

What nowadays is the stone ; 

The cunning painter in a trice 

Your house's outside petrifies, 

And people think it very gneiss 

Without inquiring deeper; 

My money never shall be thrown 

Away on such a deal of stone, 

When stone of deal is cheaper." 

— The Unhappy Lot of Mr. Knott. 

" He kin' o' l'itered on the mat, 
Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 

But hern went pity Zekle." — The Courtin\ 

8. Pathos. — As is the case with all true masters of humor, 
the fountains of Lowell's fun lie near the sources of his tears. 
Such poems as "The Changeling," "The First Snow-Fail, M 
and "The Two Angels " are filled with the tenderest pathos. 

" Lowell's wife died, leaving him in that gloom from which 
came the series of short poems . . . the best expression 
of the finest side of the man's nature, 'The Wind-Harp,' 
1 Auf Wiedersehen? 'After the Burial,' and 'The Dead 
House' — expressions of the strong passions of grief. 
The only thing I know in English poetry to set beside them 



602 LOWELL 

for genuine pathos is the ' Break, break, break ' of Tennyson." 
— W. J. Stillman. 

" If the test of poetry be in its power over hearts, the ruth 
in this series [later " Biglow Papers "] must be placed in the 
highest rank. The beginning is quaint, simple, and even 
humorous, but with a subdued tone ; there is no intimation of 
the coming pathos. . . . We are led, stanza by stanza, 
to the heights where thought and feeling become one. . . 
They [the lines in reference to the poet's three slain nephews] 
are palpitant like naked nerves, and every word is like a leaf 
plucked by Dante, which trickled blood. ... A letter 
to the Editor of The Atlantic Monthly . . . breaks into 
an agony of lament for the young heroes fallen in battle, and 
closes with an apostrophe to Peace that few Americans . 
can read, even for the twentieth time, with dry eyes." — F. 
H. Underwood. 

" Of the Biglow epistles, the tenth has the most pathetic 
undertone. . . . His heart is full with its own sorrows, 
he half-despises himself ' for rhymin' ' when his young kins- 
men have fallen in the fray." — E. C. Stedman. 

"The deep pathos in some of Mr. Lowell's poems is as 
striking as any of his other qualities. No common note was 
reached in ' The First Snow-Fall ;' ... he has written 
nothing so touching and so exquisite as 'The Changeling.' 
It seems to us that the pathetic and unadorned sim- 
plicity of this poem has never been surpassed by any English 
writer. . . . The strongest utterances are the poems and 
the ballads in which the author deals with human emotion. 
For an example take ' The Dead House,' whose pathos must 
find its way to any heart. ... In some respects ' The 
Cathedral ' deserves to rank as the highest of all of Mr. Low- 
ell's poetical productions. . . . It is deeply introspective, 
and is charged with pathetic memories of the long ago." — G. 
B. Smith. 



LOWELL 603 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 
And it hardly seemed a day, 
When a troop of wandering angels 
Stole my little daughter away ; 
Or perhaps those heavenly zingari 
But loosed the hampering strings, 
And when they had opened her cage-door, 
My little bird used her wings. 

But they left in her stead a changeling, 

A little angel child, 

That seems like her bud in full blossom, 

And smiles as she never smiled : 

When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 

And I feel as weak as a violet 

Alone 'neath the awful sky." — The Changeling. 

" While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low 
Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin' 
The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, 
Further an' further south retreatin'. 

The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, 
Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' 

Seem kin' o' sad, an 'roun' the hearth 
Of empty places set me thinkin.' " 

— Biglow Papers. 

" I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
Where a little headstone stood ; 
How the flakes were folding it gently, 
As did robins the babes in the wood. 



I remembered the gradual patience 
That fell from that cloud like snow, 
Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
The scar that renewed our woe. 



604 LOWELL 



And again to the child I whispered, 

' The snow that husheth all, 

Darling, the merciful Father 

Alone can make it fall ! ' " — The First Snow-Fall. 



9. Deep Religious Instinct.— Although Lowell often 
ridiculed and always rebelled against that narrow "ortho- 
doxy " in the midst of which he was reared, his poems prove 
him to be possessed of a profound religious instinct. 

" The deep religious instinct, emancipated from all forms, 
but vibrating with the fitful certainty of an Aeolian harp to 
' the wind that bloweth where it listeth ' — this is the first thing 
in Lowell's mind, as it is the second in Longfellow's, and the 
third in Bryant's." — H. R. Haweis. 

" The obvious characteristic of the poems [those first pub- 
lished in the volume with the " Legend of Brittany "] is their 
high religious spirit. It is not a mild and passive morality that 
we perceive, but the aggressive force of primitive Christianity. 
. , . . Though the physical aspect of evolution had engaged 
his attention, as it has that of all intellectual men, and had 
commanded perhaps a startling and dubious assent, yet his 
strong spiritual nature recoiled in horror from the materialistic 
application of the doctrine to the origin of things. Force 
could never be to him the equivalent of spirit, nor law the 
substitute for God. In conversation once upon the 'prom- 
ise and potency ' phrases of Tyndall, he exclaimed with 
energy, 'Let whoever will believe that the idea of Hamlet 
or Lear was developed from a clod; I will not.'" — F. H. 
Underwood. 

"In ' What Rabbi Jehosha Said,' and many other poems, 
he teaches the grandeur of Christian charity and Christian 
humility. In fact, he is one of the profoundest preachers in 
the whole brotherhood of song." — G. B. Smith. 

"He is the poet of pluck and action and purpose, of the 



LOWELL 605 

gayety and liberty of virtue. . . . His poetical perform- 
ance might sometimes, no doubt, be more intensely lyrical, 
but it is hard to see how it could be more intensely moral — I 
mean, of course, in the widest sense of the term. His play is 
as good as a game in the open air ; but when he is serious 
he is as serious as Wordsworth and much more compact." 
— Henry James. 

"That justice and law and righteousness are things for 
which any man with an immortal soul in him would willingly 
die — these formed the stock of axioms with which the son of 
the Massachusetts minister started in life. . . . There is 
hardly anything which Lowell wrote that is not calculated 
and intended to awaken worthy ambition, generous effort, 
and an earnest appreciation of purity, nobility, and truth, 
whether in literature or life. . . . It is pleasant in his 
last poems to note how the generous enthusiasm for progress, 
the faith in an ideal, which were the legacies of his early train- 
ing, remained, through all the bitterness of controversy and 
after the militant scorn for the mean and unworthy had died 
down into a placid tolerance." — Sidney Low. 

" At the root of his personality lay a deep moral earnest- 
ness. Mr. Lowell was of Puritan descent ; and though the 
training of three generations had refined all Puritan acerbity 
and narrowness out of him, yet the aggressive moral temper 
of the Puritan was still in his blood. . . . His own 
ideas were rather moral than merely literary ; and all his best 
writing, in poetry, at all events, has a distinct ethical motive." 
— C. T. Winchester. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" There is no broken reed so poor and base, 
No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, 
But he therewith the ravening wolf can chase, 
And guide his flock to springs and pastures new ; 



606 LOWELL 

Through ways unlooked for and through many lands, 
Far from the rich folds built with human hands, 
The gracious foot-prints of His love I trace. 

Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 
And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone ; 
Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, 
Texts of despair or hope or joy or moan. 

If the chosen soul could never be alone 

In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, 

No greatness ever had been dreamed or done ; 

Among dull hearts a prophet never grew; 

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude."— Columbus. 

" I had a little daughter, 
And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 
To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
That I, by the force of nature, 
Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 
To this wayward soul of mine." 

— The Changeling. 

10. Idyllic Power. — Lowell vies with Whittier in his 
rare ability to picture homely rustic scenes and to bring out 
the latent poetry concealed in rural home life. 

"The ' Biglow Papers' were the first, and are the best, 
metrical presentation of Yankee character in its thought, dia- 
lect, and manners. . . . Never sprang the flower of art 
from a more unpromising soil ; yet these are eclogues as true 
as those of Theocritus or Burns. . . . This bucolic idyl 
[" The Courtin' "] is without a counterpart ; no richer juice 
can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee soil." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

"This ["The Courtin' "] is the most genuine of our native 
idyls. It affects one like coming upon a new and quaint 



LOWELL 607 

blossoming orchid, or hearing Schumann's ■ Einsame Blume.' 
. . . In < The Courtin' ' and ' Somthin' in the Pastoral 
Line ' he has shown for the first time the idyllic side of New 
England life." — F. H. Underwood. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 
'ith no one nigh to hender. . . . 

The very room, coz she was in, 
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin' ; 
An she looked ful ez rosy agin 
Es the apples she was peelin'. . . . 

She heered a foot, an' knowed it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 

All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper." — The Courtin* ' . 

" Here, 
The scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, 
And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, 
Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair, — 
A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 
Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, 
And many men and manners he hath seen, 
Not without fruit of solitary thought." 

— Under the Willows. 

" Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, 
Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, 
Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, 
Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 
And munch an unearned meal. 



608 LOWELL 

I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, 

Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, 

His equal now, divinely unemployed. 

Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, 

Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things ; 

He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, 

By right of birth exonerate from toil, 

Who levies rent from us his tenants all, 

And serves the state by merely being." 

— Under the Willows. 

II. Knowledge of and Faith in Human Nature. 

— " Man is the great object of Lowell's song, because the 
world must be advanced to attain the full stature of great- 
ness. . . . His ethical code is healthful and refreshing ; 
he analyses human nature with all the magical power, if also 
with the tenderness, of the skilfullest of soul-physicians. He 
is the best of metaphysicians, because his conclusions are 
based, not upon theory, but upon heart-throbs of that human- 
ity whose soul he endeavors to pierce. . . . His knowl- 
edge of human nature is very profound." — G. B. Smith. 

" Next to his deep love of God is our poet's love of man. 
It is the love of the man in all men, of the womanly in every 
woman — the true enthusiasm of humanity — which 

1 Sees beneath the foulest faces lurking 
One God-built shrine of reverence and love.' " 

— H. R. Haweis. 
"With all the faith he had in his own people of the past, 
he looked forward to the new race which is yet forming in our 
womb, and nowhere in our literature is there more direct ex- 
pression of the national faith in mere manhood than in a few 
great lines of these patriotic poems, or, more soberly and ex- 
plicitly, in the essay upon Democracy." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" There was another phase of Lowell's teaching which was 
not less helpful, and that was his inexhaustible faith in the in- 
extinguishable ' spark of God ' in the human heart." — W. T. 
Stead. 



LOWELL 609 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I often wonder what the Mountain thinks 
Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks, 
Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd, 
If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. 
I, who love Nature much as sinners can, 
Love her where she most grandeur shows, — in man : 
Here I find mountain, forest, cloud, and sun, 
River and sea, and glows when day is done ; 
Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest 
The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading zest. 
The natural instincts year by year retire, 
As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire, 
And he who loves the wild game-flavor more 
Than city feasts, where every man's a bore 
To every other man, must seek it where 
The steamer's throb and railway's iron blare 
Have not yet startled with their punctual stir 
The shy, wood- wandering brood of Character." 

— Fitz Adam's Story. 

" And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking, 
One God-built shrine of reverence and love ; . . 

Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer 
Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, 
Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer 
Than that of all his brethren, low or high." — Ode. 

" Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, 
Having two faces, as some images 
Are carved, of foolish gods ; one face is ill ; 
But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, 
As are all hearts, when we explore their depths. 
Therefore, great heart, bear up ! thou art but type 
Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain 
Would win men back to strength and peace through love : 
Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart 
39 



6lO LOWELL 

Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears life-long 
With vulture beak ; yet the high soul is left ; 
And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love, 
And patience which at last shall overcome." 

— Prometheus. 

12. Sectionalism — Nationalism.— Quite as much as 
Whittier, though in another way, Lowell proclaims himself a 
son of New England and of America. He gloried in being 
an American. It has been justly said of him that " he did 
more than any other man to command respect for our institu- 
tions " in the minds of all Europeans. During his later years 
Lowell was charged by that class of pseudo-statesmen against 
whom he had directed some of his keenest darts, with being 
un-American. Never was a more baseless slander uttered. In 
a recently-published letter addressed to his friend, Joel Ben- 
ton, and bearing date of January, 1876, Lowell indignantly, 
exclaims: "These fellows have no notion of what love of 
country means. It is in my very blood and bones. If I am 
not an American, who ever was? I am no pessimist, nor ever 
was. . . . What fills me with doubt and dismay is the 
degradation of the moral tone. Is it, or is it not, a result of 
Democracy? Is ours a government of the people, by the 
people, for the people, or a Kakistocracy rather, for the bene- 
fit of knaves at the cost of fools? Democracy is, after all, 
nothing more than an experiment, like another ; and I know 
only one way of judging it — by its results. Democracy in 
itself is no more sacred than monarchy. It is man who 
is sacred. . . . It is honor, justice, culture that make 
liberty invaluable. . . . Forgive me for this long letter 
of justification, which I am willing to write for your friendly 
eye, though I should scorn to make any public defence. Let 
the tenor of my life and writings defend me." 

" He is an American of the Americans, alive to the idea 
and movement of the whole country, singularly independent 
in his tests of its men and products — from whatever section or 



LOWELL 6ll 

in however unpromising a form they chance to appear. . . . 
He seems to represent New England more variously than 
either of his comrades. We find in his work, as in theirs, her 
loyalty and moral purpose. She has been at cost for his train- 
ing, and he in turn has read her heart, honoring her as a 
mother before the world and seeing beauty in her common 
garb and speech. ... To him the Eastern States are 
what the fathers, as he has said, desired to found — no new 
Jerusalem but a New England and, if it might be, a better 
one. His poetry has the strength, the tenderness, and the 
defects of the down-East temper." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Lowell was an intense New Englander. There is no finer 
figure of the higher Puritan type. The New England soil, 
from which he sprang, was precious to him. The New England 
legend, the New England language, New England character 
and achievement, were all his delight and familiar study. 
. . . Burns did not give to the Scottish tongue a nobler 
immortality than Lowell gave to the dialect of New England. 
Literature was his pursuit, but patriotism was his 
passion. His love of country was that of a lover for his 
mistress. . . . Nowhere in literature is there a more 
magnificent and majestic personification of a country whose 
name is sacred to its children, nowhere a profounder passion 
of patriotic loyalty, than the closing lines of the ' Com- 
memoration Ode.' The American whose heart, swayed by 
that lofty music, does not thrill and palpitate with solemn 
joy and high resolve, does not yet know what it is to be an 
American. Nobody who could adequately depict the Yankee 
ever knew him as Lowell knew him, for he was at heart the 
Yankee that he drew. . . . The 'Biglow Papers' are dis- 
tinctively American. . . . They could have been written 
nowhere else but in Yankee New England by a New England 
Yankee." — George William Curtis. 

" His America was a country worth hearing about, a mag- 
nificent conception, an admirably consistent and lovable ob- 



6l2 LOWELL 

ject of allegiance. If the sign that in Europe one knew him 
best by was his intense national consciousness, one felt that 
this consciousness could not sit lightly on a man in whom it 
was the strongest form of piety. . . . New England 
was heroic, for he felt in his pulses the whole history of 
her origines. . . . One felt in his patriotism the depth 
of passion that hums through much of his finest verse 
— almost the only passion that, to my sense, his poetry 
contains — the accent of chivalry, of the lover, the knight 
ready to do battle for his mistress. Above all, it was a partic- 
ular allegiance to New England ; ... it was impossible 
to know him without a sense that he had a rare divination of 
the hard realities of her past." — Henry James. 

" In the poet's writing we find the life and passion of New 
England to a verity and the best thought of our people 
at large. . . . Lowell will chiefly be remembered as 
poet because of his New England heart and voice — his idyls 
of the Junes and Decembers of Massachusetts and his verse of 
anti-slavery and patriotism." — C. F. Richardson. 

''The elementary fact about Lowell, which stands at the 
threshold of every discussion of his works, is that he was born 
and bred a New Englander. It is a fact which he himself 
does not permit his readers to forget. In his prose and in his 
verse he goes back to it again and again. Literature will 
know him longest, not as the critic nor as the writer of elegies, 
lyrics, and odes, but as the poet who gave literary form and 
value to the indigenous humor, rhetoric, and satire of the 
farmers of New England." — Sidney Low. 

" If there was one quality more than another that summed 
up Lowell's characteristics, it was his Americanism. 
Longfellow and Bryant are essentially English, modified 
slightly by their American environment." — G. E. Woodberry. 



LOWELL 613 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I first drew in New England's air, and from her hearty breast 
Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest ; 
And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 
'Tis but my Bay-state dialect — our fathers spoke the same." 

" O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never others wore, 
And letting thy set lips, 
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare ; 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the nations bright beyond compare ? " 

— Commemoration Ode, 

" For, O, my country, touched by thee, 
The gray hairs gather back their gold ; 
Thy thought sets all my pulses free ; 
The heart refuses to be old ; 
The love is all that I can see. 
Not to thy natal day belong 
Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong, 
But gifts of gratitude and song : 
Unsummoned crowd the thankful words, 
As sap in spring-time floods the tree, 
Foreboding the return of birds, 
For all that thou hast been to me ! " 

— An Ode for the Fourth of July. 

13. Melody — Classical Finish. — "The public was 
right in its liking for 'The Changeling,' * She Came and 
Went,' and 'The First Snow-Fall,' than which there are few 
more touching lyrics of the affections. . . . The public 
keeps in store for him the adage of the wilful songster. That 
he can sing was discovered at the outset. . . . He is all 



6 14 LOWELL 

poet, and the blithest, most unstudied songster on the old 
Bay Shore. . . . Especially in his shorter lyrics, there is 
a perfect melody, real music, which has a charm apart from 
the meaning of the verse." — E. C. Stedman. 

"These poems [on Garrison, Phillips, etc.], especially that 
on 'The Present Crisis,' have a Tyrtean resonance, a stately 
rhetorical rhythm, that make their dignity of thought, their 
intense feeling and picturesque imagery, superbly effective in 
recitation." — George William Curtis. 

"The terseness, ease, and finish of these lines [Lowell's 
shorter lyrics], in which compliment blends with the wisdom 
of life, and the whole is subdued within the range of personal 
talk from friend to friend, are qualities unique in our poetry, 
and recall the modes of utterance of a more polished, lettered 
age, when intellect and manners held their own beside emo- 
tion, and the literary life was more complete in manly pow- 
ers." — G. E. Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I saw the twinkle of white feet, 

I saw the flash of robes descending ; 
Before her ran an influence fleet, 

That bowed my heart like barley bending. . . . 



Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 

And shuns the hands would seize upon her ; 

Follow thy life, and she will sue 

To pour for thee the cup of honor." — Hebe. 

" In the twilight deep and silent 
Comes thy spirit unto mine, 
When the moonlight and the starlight 
Over clirTand woodland shine, 
And the quiver of the river 
Seems a thrill of joy benign."— Reverie. 



LOWELL 615 

" All things are sad : — 
I go and ask of Memory, 
That she tell sweet tales to me 
To make me glad ; 
And she takes me by the hand, 
Leadeth to old places, 
Showeth the old faces 
In her hazy mirage-land ; 
Oh, her voice is sweet and low, 
And her eyes are fresh to mine 
As the dew 
Gleaming through 
The half-unfolded Eglantine, 
Long ago, long ago ! 
But I feel that I am only 
Yet more sad and yet more lonely ! " — Song. 



LONGFELLOW, 1807-1882 

Biographical Outline. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
born in Portland, Mass. (afterward Maine), February 27, 
1807, of parents descended on both sides from English an- 
cestry ; father a lawyer of high standing, a Harvard classmate 
of Channing and Judge Story, and at one time a member of 
Congress ; Longfellow had four brothers and four sisters ; as a 
boy he manifests the gentleness so characteristic of his poems, 
disliking violent games, noises, etc. ; he has early access to 
the best English classics, and is especially fond of Cowper, 
Ossian, and Washington Irving ; he is reared strictly, although 
he goes, with his family and church, into the earlier forms of 
Unitarianism and, as a young man, takes singing and dancing 
lessons ; he enters a private school at the age of five, but soon 
withdraws, disgusted with the companionship of rough boys ; at 
six he enters the Portland Academy, and is " half through his 
Latin grammar" before he is seven ; among his teachers at 
the school was Jacob Abbott ; as a boy Longfellow is hand- 
some, frank, and retiring ; his school vacations are spent on 
the farm of his grandfather, Judge Longfellow, at Graham 
Corners, near Portland, and at Hiram, where his maternal 
grandfather, General Wadsworth, of Revolutionary fame, and 
also a Harvard graduate, had an estate of 7,000 acres ; Long- 
fellow's first published poem, " The Battle of Lovell's Pond," 
commemorating an Indian fight at a pond near Hiram, ap- 
pears anonymously in the Portland Gazette, November 20, 
1820 (the lines on "Mr. Finney and his Turnip," once so 
widely published as Longfellow's first poem, are not his) ; 
about this time he forms a literary partnership with a boy 
named William Browne, and together they write plays, epi- 

616 



LONGFELLOW 617 

grams, and "tragedies;" Longfellow's youthful feelings and 
experiences are afterward expressed in the poem "My Lost 
Youth." 

Longfellow enters Bowdoin College, of which his father was 
a trustee, in 182 1, but does the work of Freshman year at 
home, and begins his residence at Brunswick in 1822, rooming 
with his elder brother in the house where Mrs. Stowe after- 
ward wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin;" in college Longfellow 
maintains a high rank, and is noted for his refined manners 
and happy temperament; he confesses that he "cares little 
about politics or anything of the kind ; " in the winter vaca- 
tion of 1823-24 he visits Boston and dances at " a splendid 
ball" given at Cambridge in honor of the Russian Consul; 
while in college he contributes to a Portland journal several 
poems not thought worth reprinting and to the American 
Monthly Magazine several prose articles ; in November, 1824, 
he publishes in the U. S. Military Gazette a poem entitled 
"Thanksgiving," which shows plainly the influence of Bry- 
ant, who was then contributing to the same periodical ; dur- 
ing 1825 Longfellow publishes in the Gazette sixteen poems, 
of which five were reprinted in "Voices of the Night," his 
first volume of poems ; he also contributes to the Gazette three 
prose essays; at this time, when Longfellow was only seven- 
teen, his name was " honorably mentioned " in the Galaxy 
with those of Bryant (then already famous) and Percival, and 
Longfellow's poem "Autumnal Nightfall" was attributed to 
Bryant; in March, 1824, he writes to his father : "I am 
anxious to know what you intend to make of me. 
I hardly think nature intended me for the bar, the pulpit, or 
the dissecting-room. I am altogether in favor of the farmer's 
life ; " while at Bowdoin he unites with five fellow-students in 
forming a Unitarian club, and disseminates Unitarian tracts ; 
as early as December, 1824, he proposes to his father to allow 
him to spend a year at Harvard after graduation, where he 
means to study history, literature, and Italian, and after which 



6l8 LONGFELLOW 

he proposes to attach himself to some literary journal as a 
means of livelihood; he adds: "The fact is, I most eagerly 
aspire after future eminence in literature. My whole soul 
burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres 
in it. . . . I will be eminent in something; " at gradu- 
ation, in September, 1825, he stands fourth in a class of thirty- 
eight ; immediately after Commencement he is offered the 
newly established chair of modern languages at Bowdoin, on 
the condition that he visit Europe to prepare himself for the 
place ; he remains at Portland, awaiting mild weather for his 
ocean voyage, till May, 1826, meantime reading a little 
Blackstone in his father's office, but devoting most of his time 
to writing ; during this winter he writes " Autumn," " Mus- 
ings," "The Burial of the Minnesink," and " The Song of 
the Birds ; " he starts for Europe by way of Boston, North- 
ampton, Albany, and New York early in May, 1826 ; at 
Northampton Dr. Channing gives him letters to Irving, 
Southey, and Professor Eichorn of Gottingen ; he reaches 
Havre June 15th, after a month's voyage, and journeys by dili- 
gence to Paris, where he remains till February, 1827, spending 
the warm months of the summer at Auteuil and making a 
pedestrian tour along the Loire and Cher through Orleans, 
Tivher, Blois, Amboise, Tours, Vendome, and Chartres ; at 
Paris he meets Cooper and Sidney Smith ; he leaves Paris for 
Madrid late in February, 1827, travelling by way of Bordeaux, 
Bayonne, Tolosa, and Burgos ; at Madrid he comes into close 
social relations with Alexander Everett, then American Min- 
ister to Spain, and with Washington Irving, then writing his 
" Life of Columbus ; " Longfellow visits Segovia and the Es- 
corial ; he studies Spanish industriously, refusing to return to 
America " a mere charlatan," saying, " though I might deceive 
others as to the extent of my knowledge, I cannot so easily 
deceive myself; " in September, 1827, he leaves Madrid for 
Italy, travelling by way of Cordova, Seville, Cadiz, Gibraltar, 
Malaga, Granada, Marseilles, Toulon, Nice, Genoa, and Pisa 



LONGFELLOW 619 

to Florence, where he remains several weeks and sees much 
brilliant society ; he spends the spring and early summer of 
1828 in Naples and Rome, and is dangerously ill at Rome in 
July ; he convalesces at Arricia, returns to Rome, and remains 
till December, and then goes to Dresden by way of Venice, 
Verona, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, Trieste, Vienna, and 
Prasrue : meantime he learns that the trustees of Bowdoin have 
withdrawn their offer of a professorship because of a lack of 
funds, and have offered him instead an instructorship, which 
he promptly declines ; by this time (December, 1828) he 
has acquired a fluent command of French, Spanish, Portuguese, 
and Italian ; he reaches Dresden late in December, and settles 
down to the study of German, greatly aided socially by letters 
of introduction from Irving ; late in February he goes to Got- 
tingen to join his friend Preble ; in March, 1829, he writes 
to his sister: "My poetic career is finished. Since I left 
home I have hardly put two lines together;" in the spring 
of 1829 he takes a vacation in England, and returns through 
Holland to Gottingen and his German studies ; in May, 1829, 
he begins to write "a kind of sketch-book of scenes in France, 
Spain, and Italy; " he is recalled in June, 1829, by the danger- 
ous illness of his sister and by the refusal of his father to sup- 
ply funds for a longer European residence ; he reaches New 
York August 11, 1829, after the death of his sister Elizabeth. 
After again refusing a proffered instructorship at Bowdoin, 
he is elected, September 1, 1829, professor of modern lan- 
guages at a salary of $800 a year, and is also made librarian 
with an additional salary of $100 ; he takes up his work at 
once, and begins by translating for his pupils a small French 
grammar and editing a collection of French proverbs and a 
Spanish reader ; at the Commencement of 1830 he delivers his 
inaugural address on the origin and growth of the languages and 
literature of Southern Europe ; in 183 1 he begins to contribute 
to the North A?nerican Reviezv, then edited by his friend 
Alexander Everett; in September, 183 1, he marries Mary 



620 LONGFELLOW 

Storer Potter, the daughter of a Portland neighbor ; he reads 
the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Bowdoin in September, 1832, and 
repeats it by request at Harvard in 1833, in connection with 
an oration by Edward Everett ; he publishes the first five 
sketches of " Outre Me?- 1 ' in the New England Magazine 
under the title of " The Schoolmaster ; " the first two sketches 
of " Outre Mer" are published anonymously in pamphlet 
form in Boston in 1833; Longfellow's first published book, 
however, was a translation from the Spanish of Don Jorge 
Manrique, Lope de Vega, and others; in December, 1834, he 
is appointed to succeed George Ticknor as Smith Professor of 
modern languages at Harvard, with the privilege of a year and 
a half in Europe at his own expense before taking the chair. 

He sails for Europe with his wife in April, 1835, first ar- 
ranging for the publication of " Outre Mer " in two volumes ; 
in London he meets the Carlyles ; thence, in the summer, by 
way of Hamburg to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where he 
studies Swedish, Finnish, and Danish ; he is detained at Am- 
sterdam on his way to Germany by his wife's illness, and 
devotes a month to the study of Dutch ; his wife dies at Rot- 
terdam, November 29, 1835 ; Longfellow pushes on to 
Heidelberg, where he settles down to the study of German, 
and where he first meets Bryant, then residing in Heidelberg 
with his family; in June, 1836, Longfellow goes to Switzer- 
land by way of Munich, Milan, and the Simplon ; he spends 
two months travelling about Switzerland, leaves Heidelberg 
for Paris late in August, 1836, and sails for America early in 
October ; in December, 1836, he takes up his work as a pro- 
fessor at Harvard, and soon enters upon his life-long intimacy 
with Charles Sumner, who was then lecturing in the Harvard 
Law School ; in March, 1837, he begins his long correspond- 
ence with Hawthorne, and soon afterward really introduces 
Hawthorne to the literary world by writing for the North 
American Review a favorable criticism on "Twice Told 
Tales;" in May, 1837, he takes lodgings in Craigie House 



LONGFELLOW 62 1 

(once Washington's head -quarters), where he resides during 
the rest of his life; here, from 1837 to 1845, Longfellow 
writes many poems, and submits them to his intimate friends, 
Felton, Sumner, and Hillard ; the " Psalm of Life" was 
written here July 26, 1838, and appeared in the Knicker- 
bocker Magazine in the following October, attracting much 
attention. 

In August, 1838, Longfellow described his daily routine as 
follows : "I smoke a good deal, wear a broad-brimmed 
black hat, molest no one, and dine out frequently. In win- 
ter I go much into Boston society;" he begins writing 
" Hyperion " November 27, 1838, and writes " The Reaper 
and the Flowers" on the 6th of the following December, 
" with peace in my heart and not a few tears in my eyes ; " he 
publishes " Hyperion " in two volumes in the summer of 1829, 
and his first volume of poems, " Voices of the Night," late 
in the autumn of the same year ; he receives $375 in notes for 
the manuscript of ' ' Hyperion ; ' ' the heroine of ' ' Hyperion ' ' 
is a true portraiture of the lady who afterward became Mrs. 
Longfellow ; in March, 1839, the poet writes : " I have three 
lectures a week and recitations without number. I go into my 
recitation-room between seven and eight and come out be- 
tween three and four, with one hour's intermission;" he 
writes "The Wreck of the Hesperus" October 30, 1839; 
during this period of his life he is in very close touch with 
Sumner, Hillard, Felton, Hawthorne, and Prescott, dining 
with them very often, and often entertaining them at his 
rooms in Craigie House ; in January, 1831, Longfellow gives 
three lectures on Dante before the Mercantile Library Associ- 
ation of New York ; " Voices of the Night " passes through 
six editions during its first two years ; " The Skeleton in 
Armor " appears in the Knickerbocker Magazine in January, 
1 84 1 ; by the summer of 1841 Longfellow has become so 
famous that, while on a visit to Philadelphia with Sumner, he 
is "lionized" till he finds it a bore; in October, 1841, he 



622 LONGFELLOW 

writes "Excelsior" and "God's Acre," and begins "The 
Children of the Lord's Supper;" in the following month 
he writes " Blind Bartimeus ; " about this time he begins also 
his "Golden Legend," of which the first part was not published 
till 1851 and the whole (the trilogy called "Christus") not 
till 1873 ; in December, 1841, he publishes his second 
volume of verse under the title " Ballads and Other Poems." 
In the spring of 1842, being in poor health, Longfellow 
obtains a leave of absence for six months, and sails for Ger- 
many, with the intention of seeking health at a water-cure 
near Boppard ; here he meets the young German poet Freili- 
grath, with whom Longfellow forms a close friendship, which 
lasts through life ; he also makes brief visits to Paris, Antwerp, 
and Bruges, and while at Bruges gains inspiration for the 
" Belfry " poems, published a year or two later ; he returns to 
America by way of Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Ostend, 
and London, where he is royally welcomed by Dickens, and 
becomes the novelist's guest at Broadstairs, in Kent ; Long- 
fellow reaches Cambridge in November, 1842, much improved 
in health, and soon after his return publishes a small pam- 
phlet of poems on slavery, most of which were written during 
the homeward voyage ; the " Ballads " reaches a fifth edition 
by the summer of 1843 ; in July, 1843, Longfellow marries 
Miss Frances E. Appleton, daughter of a prominent Boston 
merchant, a lady whom he had met in Switzerland six years 
before and had immortalized in " Hyperion ; " while on his 
wedding journey to "the old-fashioned country seat " near 
Pittsfield, Mass., Longfellow sees "the old clock on the 
stairs ; " they return in the autumn to Craigie House, which 
Mrs. Longfellow's father buys for them, together with a plot of 
land across the street, to give them an uninterrupted view of 
the Charles River ; during this autumn he edits two large vol- 
umes on the Poets and Poetry of Europe, but in doing this work 
so strains his eyes that for many years he is unable to use them 
except in the daytime and then for but short intervals ; he also 



LONGFELLOW 623 

begins to translate Dante about this time ; in a letter to Whit- 
tier in 1844 he declines a nomination to Congress, saying : 
" I rejoice in freedom from slavery of all kinds, but I cannot 
for a moment think of entering the political arena ; " during 
1845 he writes several short poems, including "The Old 
Clock on the Stairs," "Toa Child," " The Bridge," " Birds 
of Passage," and "The Arrow and the Song," and begins 
" Evangeline," which he at first calls " Gabrielle ; " late in 
1845 he publishes an illustrated volume containing the short 
poems just named, with others already published, and wins 
high praise from Bryant ; in February, 1846, he publishes a 
cheap two-volume edition of his poems, and revises " Outre 
Mer ; " he writes " The Builders " during the following May ; 
by July, 1846, 12,000 copies of " Voices of the Night " had 
been sold; Longfellow writes ''Pegasus in Pound" in De- 
cember, 1846, and uses it as a prologue to " The Estray," 
published during the same month ; he finishes " Evangeline " 
February 27, 1847, and at once begins his prose romance 
"Kavanagh;" he revises "Evangeline" at Oak Grove, 
near Portland, during the summer vacation, and publishes it 
October 30, 1847 3 there is much hostile criticism of the hex- 
ameter; the story on which " Evangeline " is based had first 
been suggested to Hawthorne by a Boston clergyman, but 
Hawthorne declined it for a romance and gave it to Longfel- 
low; much of " Evangeline " was first written with a pencil in 
the dark, to save the author's eyes, and was afterward copied 
out ; 6,000 copies were sold within six months of publica- 
tion ; Longfellow is much depressed by the death of his little 
daughter, Fannie, August n, 1848 ; he finishes " Kavanagh " 
November 9, 1848, and publishes it May 13, 1849; he be- 
gins " The Building of the Ship " June 18, 1849, and pub- 
lishes it in a collection of his poems called " Seaside and 
Fireside" in the following November, receiving $1,000 for 
the first edition ; this volume contained " Resignation " and 
" The Fire of Driftwood." 



624 LONGFELLOW 

In 1850 Longfellow again takes up " Christus," saying in his 
journal : " Now I long to try a loftier strain in sublimer song, 
whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through 
my soul in the better hours of life ; " he writes several cantos 
of " The Golden Legend" during the winter of 1850, and 
hears Fanny Kemble read "The Building of the Ship " be- 
fore 3,000 Bostonians ; in the spring of 1850, with his 
family, he visits New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, 
meeting Bryant, Webster, and Henry Clay ; he spends the 
summer of 1850 at Nahant, where he lives every summer there- 
after for many years, and meets there Whittier and the Carey 
sisters ; he finishes " The Golden Legend " in March, 1851, 
and it is published in the following December, and sells at 
first at the rate of two hundred copies a day; during 1852 
he entertains many eminent people, including Jenny Lind 
and Kossuth ; he begins his translation of Dante's " Purga- 
torio " in February, 1853, and gives in the following June a 
farewell dinner to Hawthorne, then just starting to take his 
consulship at Liverpool; he calls 1853 " the most unproduc- 
tive year of my life ; " late in March, 1854, on the occasion 
of the birth of his daughter simultaneously with the death of 
Lowell's wife, Longfellow writes "The Two Angels;" on 
April 19, 1854, he delivers at Harvard what he calls "my 
last lecture — the last I shall ever deliver anywhere;" in 
May, 1854, he writes "Prometheus and Epimetheus " and 
" The Rope- walk ; " he begins " Hiawatha " in June of this 
year, and works at it during his annual summer residence at 
Nahant ; his resignation of the professorship of modern lan- 
guages at Harvard, which he had talked of making for years, 
is accepted September 11, 1854, and thus ends his life 
of eighteen years as a teacher ; like Lowell, he had felt 
"the yoke" for years, and had worried because his teach- 
ing, his social and family duties, and his correspondence 
left him so little time for writing; late in January, 1855, 
Lowell is elected his successor at Harvard ; Longfellow fin- 



LONGFELLOW 625 

ishes "Hiawatha" March 21, 1855, and writes "My Lost 
Youth " nine days later j " Hiawatha " is published Novem- 
ber 10, 1855, and the first edition of 5,000 copies is sold in 
advance (Longfellow kept the copyright of his books in his 
own hands) ; over 1 1,000 copies of " Hiawatha " were sold in 
England during the first month ; in the autumn and winter of 
1855-56 Longfellow entertains Ole Bull, Thackeray, and T. 
B. Reed ; be begins " The Courtship of Miles Standish " De- 
cember 2, 1856 ; by March 31, 1857, the sales of his books 
in America had reached the following aggregates : " Voices 
of the Night," 43,550 copies; "Ballads," etc., 40,470; 
"The Spanish Student," 38,400; "The Belfry of Bruges," 
38,300; "Evangeline," 38,550; "Hiawatha," 50,000; 
" Outre Mer," 7,500; "Hyperion," 14,550; " Kavanagh," 
10,500. 

In December, 1857, Longfellow unites with Lowell, Mot- 
ley, Emerson, Holmes, Cabot, and Underwood in establish- 
ing the Atlantic Monthly ; he finishes " Sandalphon " January 
18, 1858, and publishes it soon afterward ; " The Courtship 
of Miles Standish " is finished March 22, 1858, and is pub- 
lished in the following October, reaching a sale of 25,000 
copies during its first week, while 10,000 copies are sold in 
London the first day after its appearance ; in the summer ot 
1859 Longfellow receives the degree of LL.D. from Harvard ; 
on April 6, i860, he visits the spire of the Old North Church 
in Boston, and on the 19th he writes " Paul Revere's Ride; " 
during the following October he assists in entertaining the 
Prince of Wales ; in November he sits for Darley's famous 
picture, " Washington Irving and his Friends," and writes 
"The Saga of King Olaf;" on July 9, 1861, Mrs. Longfel- 
low's dress catches fire, and she dies the next day from the 
burns and the shock ; Longfellow is so affected that, during 
the remaining twenty-one years of his life, he can never write 
or speak of his loss ; but after his death his beautiful sonnet on 
his wife's death entitled " The Cross of Snow," written in 
40 



626 LONGFELLOW 

1879, is found among his papers; Longfellow himself was 
severely burned while trying to save his wife ; late in 1861 he 
seeks relief from his sorrow by taking up his translation of 
Dante, begun and laid aside years before ; for a time he trans- 
lates a canto a day ; in June, 1862, with a party of friends, 
he visits Niagara, stopping two days at Trenton Falls ; from 
Niagara the party go to Montreal by way of the Thousand 
Islands and the Rapids, and thence home by way of Burling- 
ton ; in October, 1862, with Fields, he visits the old Red 
Horse Tavern in Sudbury, Mass., and begins the " Tales of a 
Wayside Inn ; " he finishes the first draft of his Dante transla- 
tion April 16, 1863, having written " a canto a day for thirty- 
four days in succession," and begins making notes for the 
same; the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (first called "The 
Sudbury Tales") is published November 25, 1863 (in the 
"Tales" the poet is T. W. Parsons; the Sicilian, Luigi 
Monti ; the theologian, Professor Treadwell ; and the student, 
Henry Ware Wales. Of these, the first three used to spend 
their summers at the Inn) ; early in 1864 Longfellow revises 
" Hyperion " for a new edition, and writes several of his 
" Birds of Passage; " on May 23d he attends the funeral of 
Hawthorne, and soon afterward writes his poem on Haw- 
thorne ; the first volume of the Dante translation appears in 
February, 1865, and a special copy is forwarded to the Italian 
Minister in time for the sexcentennial anniversary ceremonies 
in honor of the Italian poet ; all three volumes of the Dante 
translation are very carefully scrutinized by Lowell and Charles 
Eliot Norton, both meeting Longfellow one evening a week, 
as "The Dante Club," and going very carefully over every 
word and construction ; in November, 1865, Longfellow 
gives a dinner to Mr. Burlingame, our Minister to China, in 
honor of the reception of a Chinese fan, on which some " ce- 
lestial " poet had written "The Psalm of Life" in Chinese 
characters; Longfellow completes the "long labor" of the 
notes to Dante and the revision January 1, 1867 ; his sixtieth 



LONGFELLOW 627 

birthday, February 27, 1867, is celebrated with a poetical 
tribute from Lowell ; early in the following May Longfellow 
sails on his fourth and last visit to Europe, in company with 
his second son, his son's bride, Longfellow's three young 
daughters, his two sisters, a brother, and Mr. "Tom" Apple- 
ton ; the party visit the Lake district and go thence to Cam- 
bridge, where Longfellow receives the degree of LL.D. ; thence 
to London, where the poet is overwhelmed with public and 
private honors by many eminent people, including Gladstone, 
Dean Stanley, and the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, 
on both of whom he calls by special invitation; Longfellow 
also revisits Dickens at Gad's Hill, and spends two days with 
Tennyson on the Isle of Wight ; the party go thence to the 
Continent and up the Rhine to Switzerland, where they spend 
the summer ; they spend the autumn in Paris and the winter 
in Rome and Naples ; returning in the spring of 1869 by way 
of Munich and Nuremberg, they stop briefly in England and 
Scotland, and at Oxford Longfellow receives the degree of 
D.C.L. ; he returns to Cambridge September 1, 1869. 

The death of Hawthorne, Felton, and Sumner, and the ab- 
sence of Aggassiz and Lowell sadden the poet's latest years, 
though he still keeps up his companionship with Norton, 
Holmes, and Emerson, and entertains many noted Europeans at 
Craigie House ; in January, 1870, he begins the second series 
of " Tales of a Wayside Inn," and in the following May he 
prepares a supplement to his " Poets and Poetry of Europe," 
adding several new translations of his own ; in November, 
1870, he takes up his long contemplated " divine tragedy " 
of " Christus," which is published in December, 187 1 ; late 
in 1871 he writes "Judas Maccabeus" on a theme contem- 
plated for twenty years but treated in twelve days ; early in 
1872 he writes " Michael Angelo " in sixteen days, but this 
poem is not published till after his death ; in the spring of 
1872 he publishes " Three Books of Song," being the second 
part of " Tales of a Wayside Inn," " Judas Maccabeus," and 



628 LONGFELLOW 

"A Handful of Translations; " in the autumn of 1872 the 
11 Christus " appears, making, with the notes, interludes, etc., 
a large volume ; after its appearance " The Golden Legend " 
is withdrawn as a separate work ; on his sixty-sixth birthday, 
February 27, 1873, Longfellow publishes the third " day" of 
the " Tales of a Wayside Inn," and soon afterward repub- 
lishes it in a small volume with several lyrics, under the title 
" Aftermath ; " he completes " The Hanging of the Crane " 
January 4, 1874, and Robert Bonner pays him $3,000 for the 
use of the poem in the New York Ledger; in 1875 ''The 
Hanging of the Crane " is published in a volume with several 
other poems, under the title " Pandora's Box; " this volume 
contained, also, " Morituri Salutamus" written at the re- 
quest of the poet's class of 1825 and delivered at the Bowdoin 
Commencement of 1875 ; in August, 1877, he receives from 
the Harpers $1,000 for " Keramos," which is published in 
1878, with Longfellow's tributes to Lowell, Tennyson, Whit- 
tier, and others, in a volume called "Keramos; " he con- 
tinues to pass his summers at Nahant, with always a week at 
his boyhood home in Portland ; in 1879, on his seventy-sec- 
ond birthday, he is presented by the school-children of Cam- 
bridge with a chair made from the wood of the "spreading 
chestnut-tree " under which "the village smithy " formerly 
stood ; late in the same year he writes his poem on Burns, 
which appears in 1880 with seventeen other short poems in 
a thin volume called " Ultima Thule /" in 1880 the poet's 
birthday is widely celebrated by the school-children through- 
out the country ; he writes his sonnet " My Books," Decem- 
ber 26, 1882, and in the following January the poem " Mad 
River" and the sonnet " Possibilities ; " on March 15, 1882, 
he writes his last lines, being the closing stanza of " The 
Bells of San Bias; " he dies at his Cambridge home, March 
24, 1882, 



LONGFELLOW 629 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON LONGFELLOW. 

Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, 72, 37. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, 1: 58-68. 
Kennedy, W. S.," H.W. Longfellow." Cambridge, 1882, King, v. index. 
Stedman, E. C, " Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 80-225. 
Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 296-298. 
Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits. " Edinburgh, 1852, Hogg, 2: 254-256. 
Poe, E.*A., "Works." New York, 1855, 3: 292-374. 
Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890, Scribner. 
Lang, A., "Letters on Literature." New York, 1892, 37~47- 
Underwood, F. H., " H. W. Longfellow." Boston, 1882, Houghton, 

Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
Fiske, J., "The Unseen World." Boston, 1876, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 237-265. 
Longfellow, S., " Final Memorials of H. W. Longfellow." Boston, 

1876, Ticknor, v. index. 
Longfellow, S. , " Life,, Letters, and Journal of H. W. Longfellow." 

Boston, 1886, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 2 volumes, v. index. 
Robertson, E. H., " Life of H. W. Longfellow" (Great Writers Series). 

London, 1887, W. Scott, v. index. 
Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 

383-39I- 

Saunders, F., "Character Studies." New York, 1894, Whittaker, 

113-130. 
Scudder, H. E., "Men and Letters." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 23-70. 
Mitford, M. R., "Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1851, 

Harper, 61-71. 
Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes." New York, 1885, Crowell, 289-296 
Stoddard, R. H., "Poets' Homes." Boston, 1871, Lothrop, 1-18. 
Devey, J., "Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 360-368. 
Haweis, H. R., "Poets in the Pulpit." London, 1883, Sampson, Low 

& Co., 1-32. 
Matthews, Brander, " Introduction to American Literature." New York, 

1896, American Book Company, 124-137. 
Whitman, W., "Essays from the Critic." Boston, 1892. 
Whittier, J. G., "Prose Works." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 3: 365-374. 
Lowell, J. R., " Poetical Works. " Boston, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 142. 



63O LONGFELLOW 

Griswold, R. W., "Poets and Poetry of America. " Philadelphia, 1846, 

Carey & Hart, 297-301. 
Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 296-298. 
Devey, J., "A Comparative Estimate." London, 1873, Moxon, 360-367. 
North American Review, 132: 383-406 (A. Trollope) ; 105: 124-148 

(C. E. Norton); 69: 196-215 (Lowell); 82: 272-275 (E. E. 

Hale); 104: 531-540 (W. D. Howells); 66: 215, and 55: 114, 

and 50: 145 (C. C. Felton). 
Scribner's Monthly, 17: 1-19 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Harper's Magazine, 65: 123-128 (G. W. Curtis); 93: 327-343 (W. D. 

Howells). 
Century, 4 : 926-941 (E. C. Stedman). 

Good Words, 23: 385-387 (Bret Harte); 28: 154-159 (F. H. Underwood). 
Atlantic Monthly, 49: 721, 722 (O. W. Holmes); 59: 398-409 (H. E. 

Scudder). 
Nation, 34: 266, 267 (T. W. Higginson) ; 42: 300-307 (G. E. Wood- 

berry). 
Arena, 15: 183-186 (M. J. Savage). 
Chautauquan, 22: 412-416 (A. S. Cook). 
Lippincott's Magazine, 57: 95-104 (R. H. Stoddard). 
McC lure's Magazine, 7: 114-121 (E. S. Phelps). 
Critic, 2: 101 (W. Whitman); 3: ^^ (W. S. Kennedy). 
Athenceum, '82, l : 41 1 (A. Dobson). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Artistic Fidelity— Finish. 

" Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 

I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line 
Of that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. 
That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart 
Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art; 
'Tis a shrine of retreat from earth's hubbub and strife, 
As quiet and chaste as the author's own life." — Lowell. 

"Longfellow's artistic ability is admirable, because it is not 
seen. It is rather mental than mechanical. . . . The 
best artist is he who accommodates his diction to his subject ; 
and in this sense Longfellow is an artist. He selects with 



LONGFELLOW 63 1 

great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best sug- 
gests his idea." — E. P. Whipple. 

u Longfellow is a craftsman of unerring taste. He lived 
for poetry. . . . The nicest skill was required to protect 
the verse [that of " Hiawatha "] from gathering an effect of 
burlesque or of commonplace ; yet this it never does. 
He was a lyrical artist whose taste outranked his inspiration. 
He always gave of his best; neither toil nor trouble 
could dismay him until art had done its perfect work. It was 
a kind of genius — his sure perception of the fit and attractive." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" In the 'Skeleton in Armor' we find a pure and perfect the- 
sis, artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage 
and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless 
adventure, and finally, of life-continuing grief. Combined 
with all this we have numerous points of beauty, apparently 
insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. The 
heart is stirred, and the mind does not lament its mal- 
instruction. The meter is simple, sonorous, well-balanced, 
and fully adapted to the subject. On the whole, there are 
few truer poems than this." — Edgar A. Poe. 

" Longfellow, though not a very great magician and master 
of language — not a Keats by any means — has often, by sheer 
force of plain sincerity, struck exactly the right note, and 
matched his thought with music that haunts us and will not 
be forgotten." — Andrew Lang. 

"This fine sense of form, this intuitive perception of fit- 
ness, was an inestimable endowment of the artist, and is one 
of his passports to immortality. ... In all that calls for' 
delicate taste, a fine sense of fitness, and a skilful use of mate- 
rial already formed, this trilogy [" Christus "] has the poet's 
distinctive mark." — H. E. Scudder. 

"An exquisite literary artist, a very Benvenuto of grace 
and skill. . . . A literary artist of consummate elegance." 
— George William Curtis. 



632 LONGFELLOW 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
In whose orbs a shadow lies 
Like the dusk in evening skies ! 

" Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
As the braided streamlets run ! 

" Standing, with reluctant feet, 
Where the brook and river meet, 
Womanhood and childhood fleet ! " 

— Ma id en hood. 

" The sun is bright, the air is clear, 

The darting swallows soar and sing, 
And from the stately elms I hear 
The bluebird prophesying spring. 

" All things rejoice in youth and love, 
The fulness of their first delight! 
And learn from the soft heavens above 
The melting tenderness of night." 

— // Is Not Always May. 
" She lies asleep, 
And from her parted lips her gentle breath 
Comes like the fragrance from the lips of flowers ; 
Her tender limbs are still, and on her breast 
The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, 
Rises and falls with the soft tide of dreams, 
Like a light barge safe moored." — The Spanish Student. 

2. Perception of Beauty. — ■ ' They are wrong who make 
light of Longfellow's service as an American poet. His ad- 
mirers may be no longer a critical majority, yet surely he 
helped to quicken the New World sense of beauty. 
Our true rise of poetry may be dated from Longfellow's method 
of exciting an interest in it as an expression of beauty and 
feeling. . . . Puritanism was opposed to beauty as a 



LONGFELLOW 633 

strange god and to sentiment as an idle thing. Longfellow 
so adapted the beauty and sentiment of other lands to the 
convictions of his people as to beguile their reason through 
their finer senses and speedily to satisfy them that loveliness 
and righteousness may go together." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Were it not that young misses have made the phrase of 
equivocal meaning, we would call him * a beautiful poet.' He 
has a feeling exquisitely fine for what is generally understood 
by the term of beauty — that is, for actual earthly beauty, 
idealized and refined by the imagination. . . . His sense 
of beauty, though uncommonly vivid, is not the highest of 
which the mind is capable. He has little conception of its 
mysterious spirit. . . . His mind never appears oppressed, 
nor his sight dimmed by its exceeding glory. He feels and 
loves and creates what is beautiful ; but he hymns no reverence, 
he pays no adoration to the Spirit of Beauty." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His powers were rare, his studies were helpful, his sense 
of proportion and of melody exquisite, his perception of beauty 
keen." — E. H. Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The rising moon has hid the stars ; 
Her level rays, like golden bars, 
Lie on the landscape green, 
With shadows brown between. 

" And silver-white the river gleams, 
As if Diana, in her dreams, 
Had dropt her silver bow 
Upon the meadows low." — Endymion. 

11 Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, 
Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river 
Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam 

of the moonlight, 
Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious 

spirit. " — Evangeline. 



634 LONGFELLOW 

" There is a quiet spirit in these woods, 

That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows ; 
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, 
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, 
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. 
With what a tender and impassioned voice 
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, 
When the fast ushering star of morning comes 
O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; 
Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, 
In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, 
Departs with silent pace ! That spirit moves 
In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
From its full laver, pours the white cascade ; 
And babbling low amid the tangled woods, 
Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter." 

— The Spirit of Poetry. 

3. Humanity — Sympathy — Tenderness. — " Owing 
to the tenderness seldom absent from his work, Longfellow 
has often been called the poet of the affections. . . . With 
his age his tenderness grew upon him, as men's traits will for 
good or bad." — E. C. Stedman. 

" The humanities, to adopt a phrase, were never long ab- 
sent from Mr. Longfellow's thoughts. We feel their presence 
in 'The Old Clock on the Stairs,' in 'The Bridge,' etc." 
— R. H. Stoddard. 
" Does it make a man worse that his character's such 

As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much ? 

Why, there's not a bard at this moment alive 

More willing than he that his fellows should thrive ; 

While you are abusing him thus even now 

He would help either one of you out of a slough." 

— Lowell. 

" Each of his most noted poems is the song of a feeling 
common to every mind in moods into which every mind is 
liable to fall. . . . There is a humanity in them which 



LONGFELLOW 635 

is irresistible in the fit measures to which they are wedded. 
He is the poet of the household, of the fireside, of 
the universal home feeling. The infinite tenderness and pa- 
tience, the pathos, and the beauty of daily life, of familiar 
emotion, and the common scene — these are the significance of 
that verse whose beautiful and simple melody, softly murmur- 
ing for more than forty years, made the singer the most be- 
loved of living men." — George William Curtis. 

" Longfellow is wellnigh universal in his sympathies, and 
so is the beloved of all men." — F. H. Underwood. 

11 Longfellow wrote for humanity, and humanity recognized 
its own hopes and feelings in the plain aphoristic patience and 
cheer of ' The Psalm of Life.' " — C. F. Richardson. 

" He comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference, 
poet of all sympathetic gentleness and universal poet 
of women and young people." — Walt Whitman. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 



a 



(( 



O little feet ! that such long years 

Must wander on through hopes and fears, 

Must ache and bleed beneath your load ; 
I, nearer to the wayside inn 
Where toil may cease and rest begin, 

Am weary, thinking of your load ! " — Weariness. 

Thou unknown hero, sleeping by the sea 
In thy forgotten grave ! with secret shame 
I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn, 
When I remember thou hast given for me 
All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name, 
And I can give thee nothing in return." 

— A Nameless Grave. 



n < 



My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,' 
The Reaper said, and smiled ; 
1 Dear tokens of the earth are they, 
Where he was once a child. 



636 LONGFELLOW 

" They shall all bloom in fields of light, 
Transplanted by my care, 
And saints, upon their garments white, 
These sacred blossoms wear.' 

" And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 
The flowers she most did love ; 
She knew she would find them all again 
In the fields of light above." 

— The Reaper and the Flowers. 

4. Sentiment — Grace— Mildness. — ''Longfellow is 
our poet of grace and sentiment. Scores of followers have 
caught a manner which shows to advantage when transferred ; 
but his position for years at the head of even a sentimental 
school, shows that Longfellow was not without a genius of his 
own. . . . Superlative joy and woe alike were foreign 
to the verse of Longfellow. It came neither from the heights 
nor out of the depths but along the even tenor of a fortunate 
life. ... . So far as comfort, virtue, domestic tenderness, 
and freedom from extreme of passion and incident are char- 
acteristics of the middle classes, he has been their minstrel. 
. . . ' The cry of the human ' did not haunt his ear. When 
he avails himself of a piteous situation he does so as tranquilly 
as the nuns who broider on tapestry the torments of the 
doomed in hell. . . . There is something exasperating to 
serious minds in his placid waiver of the grievous or the dis- 
tasteful. . . . From the first he was a poet of sentiment. 
His worldly wisdom was of the gospel kind, so 
gently tempered as to do no evil. . . . Next above these 
pretty homilies are his poems of sentiment and twilight brood- 
ings. ' The Reaper and the Flowers,' ' Footsteps of Angels,' 
etc., come home to pensive and gentle natures." — E. C. Sted- 
man. 

M The secret of his youthful devotion to his art does not lie 
wholly in his intellectual range and richness; it springs also 



LONGFELLOW 637 

from the universality of his sentiment — we use the word in its 
pure and dignified sense — in a wide, diffused glow, which 
does not rise to the heat and blaze of passion, and is so much 
the more permanent." — Bayard Taylor. 

11 Morality to Emerson was the very breath of existence; 
to Longfellow it was a sentiment." — E. S. Robertson. 

" It was customary to say that his poetry was sentimental. 
So it was ; but the sentiment was healthy, sweet, and true. 
It was the sentiment which fills with most the place 
of reasoning, with some is the substitute for faith; a sentiment 
tender, humane, devout, trusting, submissive, but manly, 
touching all objects with romantic charm, associating the 
lowest with some human interest, connecting the highest with 
the mysteriousness of Providence and the unchanging benig- 
nity of God." — O. B. Frothingham. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
Half willing, half reluctant to be led, 
And leave his broken playthings on the floor, 
Still gazing at them through the open door, 
Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
By promises of others in their stead, 

Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; 
So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 
Being too full of sleep to understand 
How far the unknown transcends the what we know." 

— Nature. 

" The birds sang in the branches, 
With sweet, familiar tone ; 
But the voices of the children 
Will be heard in dreams alone. 



638 LONGFELLOW 

" And the boy that walked beside me, 
He could not understand 
Why closer in mine, ah ! closer, 
I pressed his warm, soft hand." 

— The Open Window. 

" The shadow of the linden-trees 
Lay moving on the grass ; 
Between them and the moving boughs, 
A shadow, thou didst pass. 

" Thy dress was like the lilies, 
And thy heart as pure as they ; 
One of God's holy messengers 
Did walk with me that day. 

" I saw the branches of the trees 
Bend down thy touch to meet, 
The clover-blossoms in the grass 
Rise up to kiss thy feet." — A Gleam, of Sunshine. 

5. Revery — Repose. — " His life and works together 
were an edifice fairly built — the ' House Beautiful,' whose air 
is peace, where repose and calm are mi n 1st rant, where the ra- 
ven's croak, symbol of the unrest of a more perturbed genius, 
is never heard. . . . Heine's rhythm and revery were 
repeated in < The Day Is Done,' 'The Bridge,' 'Twilight,' 
etc., but not his passion and scorn. . . . Neither war 
nor grief ever too much disturbed his artist-soul. Tragedy 
went no deeper with him than its pathos ; it was another 
element of the beautiful. Death was a luminous transition." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" He has little of the unrest and frenzy of the bard. . . . 
An air of repose, of quiet power, is around his composi- 
tions."— £. P. Whipple. 

" That calm sweetness of spirit, which was so apparent in 
Longfellow, was an acquisition as well as an endowment." 
— Horace E. Scudder. 



LONGFELLOW 639 

"Mr. Longfellow's instrument is not the trumpet but the 
flute. He does not so much stir as assure and soothe — more 
lullaby than appeal. He croons a cradle-song to this great 
humanity, still a child, tired and worn on its way. He gives 
the peace it implores." — C. A. Bartol. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I see the lights of the village 
Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
That my soul cannot resist ; 

" A feeling of sadness and longing, 
That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 
As the mist resembles the rain." 

— The Day Is Done . 

" From the garden just below 
Little puffs of perfume blow, 
And a sound is in his ears 
Of the murmur of the bees 
In the shining chestnut trees ; 
Nothing else he heeds or hears. 
All the landscape seems to swoon 
In the happy afternoon ; 
Slowly o'er his senses creep 
The encroaching waves of sleep, 
And he sinks as sank the town, 
Unresisting, fathoms down, 
Into caverns cool and deep ! " — Amalfi. 

6t This is the place. Stand still, my steed, 
Let me review the scene, 
And summon from the shadowy Past 
The forms that once have been. 



640 LONGFELLOW 

" The Past and Present here unite 
Beneath Time's flowing tide, 
Like footprints hidden by a brook 
But seen on either side." 

— A Gleam of Sunshine. 

6. Bookishness — Erudition.— Of all our great Amer- 
ican poets, Longfellow has drawn most from books and least 
directly from nature. 

" The bookish flavor of his work is at once its strength and 
its weakness. ... In reading Longfellow we see that 
the world of books was to him a real world. From first to 
last, if he had been banished from his library, his imagination 
would have been blind and deaf and silent. It is true that he 
fed upon the choicest yield of literature ; his gathered honey 
was of the thyme and clover, not of the rude buckwheat. . . . 
He had a bookishness as assimilative as that of Hunt or 
Lamb. . . . In * Evangeline ' there are refined pictures 
of scenery that was familiar to him w r ith just as pleasing de- 
scriptions of that which he knew only through his books." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" Even when dealing expressly with American subjects, his 
mind was so stored with the abundance of a matured civiliza- 
tion that he was constantly, by reference and allusion, carry- 
ing the reader on a voyage to Europe." — Horace E. Scudder. 

11 Among the minor defects of the play ["The Spanish 
Student "] we may mention the frequent allusion to book inci- 
dents not generally known and requiring each a note by way 
of explanation. The drama demands that everything be so 
instantaneously evident that he who runs may read ; and the 
only impression effected by these notes to a play is that the 
author is desirous of showing his reading." — Edgar A. Poe. 

" Longfellow has enjoyed every advantage that culture can 
give, and his knowledge of many nations and many languages 
undoubtedly has given breadth to his mind and opened to 
him ever new sources of poetic interest." — E. P. Whipple. 



LONGFELLOW 64I 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

u As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate 
Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state 
With the old men, too old and weak to fight, 
Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight 
To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, 
Of Trojans and Achaians in the field ; 
So from the snowy summits of our years 
We see you in the plain, as each appears, 
And question of you ; asking, ' Who is he 
That towers above the others ? Which may be 
Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, 
Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ? ' " 

— Morituri Salutamus. 

" Some legend written by Judah Rav 
In his Gemara of Babylon ; 
Or something from the Gulistan — 
The tale of the Cazy of Hamadan, 
Or of that king of Khorasan 
Who saw in dreams the eyes of one 
That had a hundred years been dead." 

— Tales of a Wayside Inn . 

" Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my 
brain ; 
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again ; 

" All the Foresters of Flanders,— mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, 
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre. 

" I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of 

old; 
Stately dames like queens attended, knights who bore the 

Fleece of Gold ; 

" Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies ; 
Ministers from twenty nations ; more than royal pomp and 
ease." — The Belfry of Bruges. 
4i 



642 LONGFELLOW 

7. Imitation — Assimilation. — While Longfellow has 
been generally acquitted of the moral guilt implied in Poe's 
famous article entitled " Mr. Longfellow and other Plagiar- 
ists," even his warmest admirers are forced to admit that he 
has repeatedly, if unconsciously, assimilated the ideas and 
even the forms of other poets. 

" It must be acknowledged, at the outset, that few poets of 
his standing have profited more openly by examples that 
suited their taste and purpose. . . . Like greater bards 
before him, he was a good borrower. . . . Given a task 
which he liked — with a pattern supplied by another — and 
few could equal him. . . . The poet's matter, if often 
gleaned from foreign literature, was novel to his readers, and 
the style distinct from that of any English contemporary. 
But if there was nothing of the Grecian in him, there 
was much of the Latinist, and with Virgil's polished muse he 
might have been quite at ease. . . . The superb apostro- 
phe to the Union [at the close of " The Building of the 
Ship "] outvies that ode of Horace on which it is modelled." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

"Even when treating of distinctly American subjects, 
. . . he borrowed his expressions from traditions of English 
poetry. . . . There are repeated instances of entirely 
second-hand reflections of scenes which were impossible to his 
eye. . . . Even when dealing with a slight historic fact, 
as in the ' Hymn to the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem,' he 
translated the entire incident into terms of foreign import. 
It would not be difficult for one, running through 
the entire body of the poems, to find in those relating to for- 
eign subjects a constant indirect reference to existing literary 
materials. Not only so, but in such poems as ' The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish ' and ' Evangeline,' the scaffolding 
which the poet put up could easily be put up by the histor- 
ical student ; in the ' Tales of a Wayside Inn ' only one is 
in any peculiar sense the poet's invention; while ' Hia- 



LONGFELLOW 643 

watha ' is Schoolcraft translated into poetry." — Horace E. 
Scudder. 

"Throughout ' The Spanish Student,' as well as through- 
out other compositions of its author, there runs a very obvi- 
ous vein of imitation. We are perpetually reminded of some- 
thing we have seen before — some old acquaintance in manner 
or matter ; and even where the similarity cannot be said to 
amount to plagiarism, it is still injurious to the poet in the 
good opinion of him who reads. . . . Much as we ad- 
mire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible to 
his many errors of affectation and imitation." — Edgar A. 
Foe. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous, 
Falls ; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows." 

— Elegiac Verse. 

Compare Coleridge's 

" In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; 
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back." 

" Look then into thy heart, and write ! " 

— Voices of the Night. 

Compare Sydney's 

" Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write." 

" Oh, what a glory doth this world put on 
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth 
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks 
On duties well performed and days well spent ! 
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves, 
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings. 
He shall so hear the solemn hymn that death 
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go 
To his long resting-place without a tear." — Autumn. 



644 LONGFELLOW 

Compare with the following from Bryant's " Thanatopsis," 
written when Longfellow was only four years old. 

" To him who in the love of nature holds 

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; 

" Go forth under the open sky, and list 
To nature's teachings, while from all around — 
Earth and her waters and the depths of air — 
Comes a still voice : — 

" Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him 
And lies down to pleasant dreams." 

8. Stock Morality — Commonplace— Didacticism. 

— " A cheerful acceptance of the lessons of life was the moral, 
suggested in many lyrics, which commended him to all virtu- 
ous, home-keeping folk, but in the end poorly served him 
with the critics. He gained a foothold by his least poetic 
work — verse whose easy lessons are adjusted to common needs ; 
little sermons in rhyme that are sure to catch the ear and to 
become hackneyed as a sidewalk song. He often taught, by 
choice, the primary class; and the upper form is slow to forget 
it. . . . As a moralist no one could make the common- 
place more attractive. . . . Simple, even elementary it 
[his poetry] manifestly is, despite the learning which he puts 
to use." — E. C. Stedman. 

11 The morality of the ' Psalm of Life ' is commonplace. If 
versified by a poetaster, it would inspire no deep feeling and 
strengthen no high purposes. But the worn axioms of didactic 
verse have the breath of a new life breathed into them when 
they are touched by genius. We are made to love and fol- 
low what before we merely assented to with a lazy acqui- 
escence. ... It would be easy to say much of Long- 
fellow's singular felicity in addressing the moral nature of man. 
It has been said of him, sometimes in derision, that all his 



LONGFELLOW 645 

poems have a moral. There is doubtless a tendency in his 
mind to evolve some useful meaning from his finest imaginations 
and to preach when he should only sing ; but we still think 
that the moral of his compositions is not thrust intrusively 
forward, but rather flows naturally from the subject. 
He inculcates with much force that poetic stoicism which 
teaches us to reckon earthly evils at their true worth and to 
endure with patience what results inevitably from our con- 
dition."—^. P. Whipple. 

" Even in spite of this friendliness and affection which 
Longfellow wins, I can see, of course, that he does moralize 
too much. The first part of his lyrics is always the best ; the 
part where he is dealing with the subject. Then comes the 
' practical application ' as preachers say, and I feel somehow 
that that is sometimes uncalled for, disenchanting, and even 
manufactured." — Andrew Lang. 

" His didactics are all out of place. . . . We do not 
mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the 
undercurrent of a poetic thesis ; but that it can never be well 
put so obtrusively forth as in the majority of his composi- 
tions. ... It will be at once evident . . . that 
he regards the inculcation of a moral as essential. 
Didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. His invention, 
his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the elucidation of 
one or more points, . . . which he looks upon as truth." 
— Edgar A. Poe. 

" Shall we think less of our poet because he aimed in his 
verse not merely to please, but also to impress some elevating 
thought in the minds of his readers? . . . No poet knows 
better than Longfellow how to impress a moral without seem- 
ing to preach. ' ' — Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



646 LONGFELLOW 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
Thus at the flaming forge of life 
Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
Each burning deed and thought." 

— The Village Blacksmith. 

" Big words do not smite like war-clubs, 
Boastful breath is not a bow-string — 
Taunts are not so sharp as arrows, 
Deeds are better things than words are, 
Actions mightier than boastings." — Hiawatha. 

" And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 
That readest this brief psalm, 
As one by one thy hopes depart, 
Be resolute and calm. 

u Oh, fear not in a world like this, 
And thou shalt know ere long — 
Know how sublime a thing it is 

To suffer and be strong." — The Light of Stars. 

9. Flexibility — Variety — Lyric Power. — " His 

command of many meters, each adapted to his special sub- 
ject, shows also how artistically he uses sound to reenforce 
vision, and satisfy the ear while pleasing the eye. 

" ' When descends on the Atlantic 
The gigantic 

Storm-wind of the equinox, 
Landward in his wrath he scourges 
The toiling surges, 

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.' 

The ear least skilled to detect the harmonies of verse feels the 
obvious effect of lines like these. In his long poems . . . 
Longfellow never repeats himself. He occupies a new domain 



LONGFELLOW 647 

of poetry with each successive poem, and always gives the pub- 
lic the delightful shock of a new surprise." — E. P. Whipple. 

" His verse has grace, melody, and variety that leave no 
room for criticism. ... It must be admitted that there 
is not to be found in the work of any other poet such variety, 
both as regards themes and treatment, as in the cycle of Long- 
fellow's poems. . . . We are struck by the variety and 
fitness of the metrical forms. . . . Hardly any poetry 
of our age has produced so many styles of effective rhythm. 
He employed successfully nearly all the rhythmic 
forms of which the language is capable, except blank verse." 
— F. H Underwood. 

" With Longfellow's faculty of putting a story into rippling 
verse almost as lightly as another would tell it in prose, we find 
ourselves assured of as many poems as he had themes. 
He combined beauty with feeling in lyrical trifles which rival 
those of Tennyson and other masters of technique, and was 
almost our earliest maker of verse that might be termed exquis- 
ite. . . . Longfellow, employing regular forms of verse, 
was flexible where many are awkward." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Although Longfellow was not fond of metrical contor- 
tions and acrobatic achievements, he well knew the effect of 
skilful variation in the forms of verse and well-managed re- 
frains or repetitions. . . . Nothing lasts like a coin or a 
lyric. ... I think we may venture to say that some of 
the shorter poems of Longfellow must surely reach a remote 
posterity and be considered then, as now, ornaments to Eng- 
lish literature. We may compare them with the best short 
poems of the language without fearing that they will suffer." 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Our vain desire 
Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear 
In Dorian flute-notes breathing soft and clear — 
The sweet contralto that could never tire." 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



648 LONGFELLOW 

" The melody of this versification is very remarkable : some 
of his stanzas sound with the richest and sweetest music of 
which language is capable." — C. C. Felton. 

" His works are graceful, tender, pensive, gentle, melodi- 
ous — the strain of a troubadour. " — George William Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The ocean old, 
Centuries old, 

Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, 
Paces restless to and fro, 
Up and down the sands of gold. 
His beating heart is not at rest ; 
And far and wide, 
With ceaseless flow, 
His beard of snow 
Heaves with the heaving of his breast." 

— The Building of the Ship. 

" Out of the bosom of the Air, 

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, 
Over the woodlands brown and bare, 

Over the harvest-fields forsaken, 
Silent and soft and slow 
Descends the snow. 

" Even as our cloudy fancies take 

Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 

Even as the troubled heart doth make 
In the white countenance confession, 

The troubled sky reveals 

The grief it feels." — Snow-Flakes. 

" This song of mine 

Is a Song of the Vine 
To be sung by the glowing embers 

Of wayside inns, 

When the rain begins 
To darken the drear Novembers." 

— Catawba Wine, 



LONGFELLOW 649 

10! Narrative Power. — " He was the first American 
to compose sustained narrative poems that gained and kept a 
place in literature. . . . Longfellow again and again re- 
ceived his crown of praise ; and this ... in return for 
the service in which he was easily first — the art which gained 
for an old-time minstrel a willing largess, that of the racon- 
teur, the teller of bewitching tales. . . . This was due to 
a modern and natural style, to the sweet variety of his meas- 
ures, and to his ease in dialogue. His frequent gayety and 
constant sense of the humanities made him a true story-teller 
for the multitude." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Mr. Longfellow's method of telling a story will compare 
favorably . . . with any of the recognized masters of 
English narrative verse from Chaucer down. . . . He 
has more than held his own against all English-writing poets, 
and in no walk of poetry so positively as that of telling a story. 
In an age of story-tellers, he stands at their head, not only in 
the poems I have mentioned, but also in the lesser stories in- 
cluded in his ' Tales of a Wayside Inn.' " — R. H. Stoddard. 

" Longfellow's power of picturing to the eye and the soul 
a scene, a place, an event, a person, is almost unrivalled." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And King Olaf heard the cry, 
Saw the red light in the sky, 

Laid his hand upon his sword, 
As he leaned upon the railing, 
And his ships went sailing, sailing, 

Northward into Drontheim fiord. 

" There he stood as one who dreamed ; 
And the red light glanced and gleamed 

On the armor that he wore ; 
And he shouted, as the rifted 
Streamers o'er him shook and shifted: 
' I accept thy challenge, Thor.' " 

— The Saga of King Olaf. 



65O LONGFELLOW 

" Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians 
Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, 
Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow- 
strings, 
Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of the 

ambush. 
But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them 
smoothly." — The Courtship of Miles Standish. 

" In a great castle near Valladolid, 

Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid, 
There dwelt, as from the chronicles we learn, 
An old Hidalgo, proud and taciturn, 
Whose name has perished with his towers of stone, 
And all his actions save this one alone." 

— Tales of a Wayside Inn. 

11. Profuse, Sometimes Labored, Imagery. — 

''Every thing suggested an image except when his imagery 
suggested the thought of which he made it seem the reflection. 
He hunts about for some emotion or the phase of 
life which these things aptly illustrate. This process not sel- 
dom becomes a vice of style. He constantly applied his im- 
agery in a formal way. . . . But whether his metaphors 
came of themselves or with prayer and fasting, they always 
came, and often were novel and poetic." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Not only was his poetry itself instinct with artistic power, 
but his appropriating genius drew within the circle of his 
art a great variety of illustration and suggestion from the 
other arts. . . . He had a catholic taste, and his rich 
decoration of simple themes was the most persuasive agency at 
work in familiarizing Americans with the treasures of art and 
legend in the old world." — Horace E. Scudder. 

"The literary decoration of his style, the aroma and color 
and richness, so to speak, which it derives from his ample ac- 
complishments in literature, are incomparable. His verse is 
embroidered with allusion and names and illustrations wrought 
with a taste so true and a skill so rare that the robe, though it 



LONGFELLOW 65 1 

be cloth of gold, is as finely flexible as linen, and still beauti- 
fully reveals, not conceals, the living form." — George William 
Curtis. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, 
Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the 

forest 
Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles 

and jewels." — Evangeline. 

" And as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon 
pass 

Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her foot- 
steps, 

As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with 
Hagar. 

" Bright rose the sun next day ; and all the flowers of the garden 
Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his 

tresses 
With the delicious balm that they bore in their vases of 

crystal." — Evangeline. 

" For now the western skies 
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise 
Like damps that gather on a dead man's face." 

— Three Friends of Mine. 

" How slowly through the lilac-scented air 

Descends the tranquil moon ! Like thistle-down 
The vapory clouds float in the peaceful sky." 

— The Spanish Student. 

12. Occasional Vigor. — While Longfellow's poetry, as 
a whole, cannot be called vigorous, there are a few marked 
exceptions. In speaking of the ''Skeleton in Armor" Sted- 
man says: "To old-fashioned people, this heroic ballad, 
written over forty years ago, is worth a year's product of what 
I may term Kensington-stitch verse." 

" There is much of the old Norse energy in this composition 



652 LONGFELLOW 

["The Skeleton in Armor"] — that rough, ravenous battle- 
spirit, which for a time makes the reader's blood rush and 
tingle in warlike sympathy." — E. P. Whipple. 

" ' The Wreck of the Hesperus ' is deservedly admired, es- 
pecially for the vigor of its descriptions. . . . The bal- 
lad of ' Sir Humphrey Gilbert ' ... is full of the an- 
cient vigor, such as it was when the language was new, and 
custom had not worn off the sharp edges of words." — F H. 
Underwood. 
" You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse, 

But remember that elegance also is force ; 

After polishing granite as much as you will, 

The heart keeps its tough old persistency still." — Lowell. 

" Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation [of Dante] is kept 
free from oddities of diction and construction, it is very ani- 
mated and vigorous." — John Fiske. 

"The poem [" Hymn of the Moravian Nuns"] 
has a native fire and an enthusiasm kindled by the thought of 
personal sacrifice in a great cause. So, too, in the ' Burial of 
the Minnisink ' the poetic passion flames forth in 

a single bold phrase at the end of the poem." — Horace E. 
Scudder. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, 
till his armor 
Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound of sinister 
omen. 

" Wildly he shouted, and loud : ' John Alden ! you have be- 
trayed me ! 

Me, Miles Standish, your friend ! have supplanted, defrauded, 
betrayed me ! 

One of my ancestors ran his sword through the heart of Wat 
Tyler ; 

Who shall prevent me from running my own through the heart 
of a traitor ? " — The Courtship of Miles Standish. 



LONGFELLOW 653 

" Silent a moment they stood, in speechless wonder, and then 
rose 

Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, 

And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door- 
way. 

Vain was the hope of escape ; and cries and fierce impreca- 
tions 

Rang through the house of prayer ; and high o'er the heads of 
the others 

Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the black- 
smith, 

As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. 

Flushed was his face and distorted with passion ; and wildly he 
shouted — 

' Down with the tyrants of England ! We never have sworn 
them allegiance ! 

Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and 
our harvests ! ' " — Evangeline. 

" * And as to catch the gale 

Round veered the flapping sail, 
Death ! was the helmsman's hail, 

Death without quarter! 
Midships with iron keel 
Struck we her ribs of steel ; 
Down her black hulk did reel 
Through the black water ! 

" * As with his wings aslant, 
Sails the fierce cormorant, 
Seeking some rocky haunt, 

With his prey laden ; 
So toward the open main, 
Beating to sea again, 
Through the wild hurricane 
Bore I the maiden.' " 

— The Skeleton in Armor. 

13. Mild Religious Earnestness— Trust— Opti- 
mism. — " Through all the romantic grace and elegance of the 



654 LONGFELLOW 

' Voices of the Night ' and ' Hyperion,' there is a moral ear- 
nestness which is even more remarkable in the poems than in 
the romance. . . . The 'Psalm of Life' was the very 
heart-beat of the American conscience, and the ' Footsteps 
of Angels' was a hymn of the fond yearning of every human 
heart. . . . It is the moral purity of his verse which at 
once charms the heart, and in his first most famous poem, the 
'Psalm of Life,' it is the direct inculcation of a moral pur- 
pose." — George William Curtis. 

" He never sounds a note of despair; doubt never sweeps 
darkly across his soul. . . . You who have ceased to be- 
lieve in the progress of right and the victory of good may be 
recalled to a healthier and nobler view by the indomitable 
hopefulness and deep trust to be found in the utterances of 
Longfellow." — H. R. Haweis. 

11 It [his poetry] is the gospel of good-will set to music. It 
has carried sweetness and light to thousands of homes. It is 
blended with our holiest affections and our immortal hopes." 
— F. H. Undenvood. 

" The great characteristic of Longfellow — that of addressing 
the moral nature through the imagination, of linking moral 
truth to intellectual beauty — is a far greater excellence. 
A person, in reading the ' Psalm of Life,' does not 
say that this poem ' is distinguished for nicety of epithet and 
elaborate, scholarly finish ; ' but rather, ' this poem touches 
the heroic string of my nature, breathes energy into my heart, 
sustains my lagging purposes, and fixes my thoughts on what 
is stable and eternal.' " — E. P. Whipple. 

" A religious trust breathes through all his books, the spirit 
of faith. . . . In a doubting or half-believing age, there 
is no query of the primal truths of God and heaven on his 
page." — C. A. Bartol. 

" As long as the heart of humanity shall beat, his voice will 
be heard in tones of music, singing words of consolation and 
hope." — R. H, Stoddard, 



LONGFELLOW 655 

" It [" Evangeline "] is a psalm of love and forgiveness ; the 
gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and forbearance 
breathe through it." — Whittier. 

" His heart was pure, his purpose high, 
His thoughts serene, his patience vast. 
He put all strifes of passion by 

And lived to God from first to last." 

— William Winter. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, 

In the fair gardens of that second birth ; 

And each bright blossom mingle its perfume 

With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth." 

— God's Acre. 

11 Then pealed the bells more loud and deep : 
1 God is not dead ; nor doth he sleep ! 
The Wrong shall fail, 
The Right prevail, 
With peace on earth, good will to men.' " 

— Christmas Bells. 

" Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
Not from the ground arise, 
But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
Assume this dark disguise. 

" We see but dimly through the mists and vapors ; 
Amid these earthly damps 
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 

May be heaven's distant lamps." — Resignation. 

14. Simplicity — Naturalness. — "In respect of this 
simplicity and naturalness, his style is in strong contrast with 
that of many writers of our time. There is no straining for 
effect, there is no torturing of rhythm for novel patterns, no 
wearisome iteration of petted words, no inelegant clipping of 



656 LONGFELLOW 

syllables to meet the exigencies of a verse, no affected archa- 
isms, rarely any liberty taken with language — unless it may be 
in the form of a few words in the translation of Dante." 
— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

1 'He was no word-monger, no winder of coil upon coil 
about a subtle theme. . . . He used his culture not to 
veil the word, but to make it clear. He drew upon it for the 
people in a manner which they could relish and comprehend." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" The clear thought, the true feeling, the pure aspiration, is 
expressed with limpid simplicity. . . . His poems are 
apples of gold in pictures of silver. There is nothing in them 
excessive, nothing overwrought, nothing strained into tur- 
gidity, obscurity, and nonsense. There is sometimes, indeed, 
a fine stateliness, as in the ' Arsenal at Springfield,' and even 
a resounding splendor of diction, as in < Sandalphon.' But 
when the melody is most delicate it is simple. The poet 
throws nothing into the mist to make it large. How purely 
melodious his verse can be without losing the thought or its 
most transparent expression, is seen in ' The Evening Star ' 
and ' Snow-Flakes.' " — George William Curtis. 

" His thought, though often deep, was never obscure. His 
lyrics . . . have a singing simplicity. . . . This 
simplicity was the the result of rare, artistic repression ; it was 
not due to any poverty of intellect." — Brander Matthews. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The twilight is sad and cloudy, 
The wind blows wild and free, 
And like the wings of sea-birds 
Flash the white caps of the sea. 

" But in the fisherman's cottage 
There shines a ruddier light, 
And a little face at the window 
Peers out into the night. 



LONGFELLOW 657 

" Close, close it is pressed to the window, 
As if those childish eyes 
Were looking into the darkness 
To see some form arise." — Twilight. 

u He goes on Sunday to the church, 
And sits among his boys ; 
He hears the parson pray and preach, 
He hears his daughter's voice 
Singing in the village choir, 
And it makes his heart rejoice. 

" It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 
Singing in Paradise ! 
He needs must think of her once more, 
How in the grave she lies ; 
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
A tear out of his eyes." 

— The Village Blacksmith. 

"' On sunny slope and beechen swell, 
The shadowed light of evening fell ; 
And, where the maple's leaf was brown, 
With soft and silent lapse came down 
The glory that the wood receives, 
At sunset, on its golden leaves. 

" Far upward in the mellow light 

Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white 

Around a far uplifted cone, 

In the warm blush of evening shone ; 

An image of the silver lakes, 

By which the Indian's soul awakes." 

— Burial of the Minnisink. 
42 



BROWNING, 1812-1889 

Biographical Outline. — Robert Browning, born May 7, 
181 2, at Cambervvell, London ; father a clerk in the Bank of 
England and a man of fine literary taste ; mother " a Scot- 
tish gentlewoman" descended from German stock; Brown- 
ing is a precocious child of great activity and fiery temper ; 
he enters a private school in infancy, makes verses before he 
can write, and so excels older children in his studies as to 
cause maternal jealousy; later he enters the private school of 
the Rev. Thomas Ready, where he remains till he is fourteen ; 
he is passionately devoted to his mother, who gives him a 
careful biblical training; he manifests also an early fondness 
for animal pets ; he exhibits, as a boy, contempt for the edu- 
cational methods of his school and for the stupidity of his 
school-fellows, although he writes plays and compels the other 
boys to act them ; his father is a great reader, and the house 
is " literally crammed with books ; " Browning reads omniv- 
orously, preferring history and literature, and early develops 
a fondness for rare books and first editions; he becomes es- 
pecially interested in the writers of the Elizabethan school 
and in Byron ; at the age of twelve he writes a " volume " of 
poems showing strong traces of Byron's influence, and calls it 
" Incondita; " his father seeks in vain for a publisher of this 
volume, and the original was probably destroyed by Brown- 
ing, although a copy made by a friend of his mother was ex- 
tant till 1871, when Browning destroyed it; " Incondita" 
was read by the Rev. W. J. Fox, who afterward became 
Browning's literary adviser and patron ; the copy so long pre- 
served in manuscript was made by Miss Flower, a musician of 
rare merit, who afterward wrote the hymn " Nearer, My God, to 

658 



BROWNING 659 

Thee ; " Browning was deeply devoted to her, and she is sup- 
posed to have inspired his "Pauline; " in 1826 he acciden- 
tally picks up " Mr. Shelley's atheistical poem," as the book- 
stall advertisement called it ; soon afterward he obtains most of 
Shelley's writings and three volumes of Keats's, although the 
local booksellers then hardly knew these poets' names ; Shelley 
and Keats came to Browning, as he said, " like two nightin- 
gales singing together in a May night," and they had an im- 
portant influence on the development of his genius ; he long 
regarded Shelley as the greatest poet of his age, if not of any 
age; for two years after reading "Queen Mab " Browning 
becomes " a professing atheist and a practising vegetarian," 
and he returns to a natural diet only when he sees that his 
eyes are becoming weakened by his abstention ; his " athe- 
ism " soon cured itself. 

As Browning's father is himself a scholar, he determines to 
educate the boy at home, where he learns music, dancing, 
riding, boxing, and fencing, and excels in the last three ac- 
complishments ; in music he makes such advancement as to 
write the airs for the songs he sung, and he remained all his 
life a fine musical critic ; he afterward destroyed his boyish 
musical compositions ; during his fourteenth and fifteenth 
years he acquires a good knowledge of the French language 
and literature under a native tutor, and in his eighteenth year 
he attends, for a term or two, a Greek class at the University 
of London ; he seems to have entirely neglected mathematics, 
logic, and the other branches that train the thinking powers 
— studies that were " doubly requisite for a nature in which 
the creative imagination was predominant over all the other 
mental faculties ; " this omission doubtless accounts in great 
part for the unfortunate involutions and inversions of his style ; 
during his later teens his restlessness and aggressiveness be- 
came intense, and he " gratuitously proclaimed himself every- 
thing that he was and some things that he was not ; " one of 
his dearest friends at this period was Alfred Domett, whom 



660 BROWNING 

Browning afterward immortalized in " Waring" and also in 
" The Guarding Angel ; " another was James Silverthorne, a 
cousin on the mother's side, who is the youth referred to in 
" May and Death ; " although Browning took a deep interest 
in art and artists, his choice of poetry as a profession was " a 
foregone conclusion ; " his early art-work was confined to 
modelling ; his father's suggestion that he study law was 
promptly rejected, as was a virtual offer of a position in the 
Bank of England ; he was never a regular churchgoer, but was 
always very fond of the drama, often in youth walking from 
Richmond to London to hear Edmund Kean. 

Browning was generously supported in his poetical work by 
his father, who bore the entire expense of publishing " Para- 
celsus," " Sordello," and " Bells and Pomegranates " — poems 
that brought no financial return to their author ; as a prelim- 
inary to his life-work in literature, Browning carefully digests 
the whole of Johnson's Dictionary ; in 1833, when he is but 
twenty, he writes " Pauline," which is published anonymously, 
the expense being borne by an aunt ; this poem is favorably 
reviewed by Browning's friend Fox in his Monthly Repository, 
while another critic calls it " a piece of pure bewilderment ; " 
in the winter of 1833-34 Browning visits St. Petersburg as the 
secretary and guest of his friend Benckhausen, then the Rus- 
sian Consul-General at London ; on his return he applies for 
a position connected with a proposed mission to Persia, but 
is unsuccessful ; from 1834 to 1836 he contributes to the 
Monthly Repository five poems, of which the first is now ex- 
tant only in his " Personalia," while the other four were af- 
terward incorporated, respectively, into " Pippa Passes," 
"Bells and Pomegranates," and "James Lee's W 7 ife ;" Brown- 
ing completes " Paracelsus " in March, 1835, and, with Fox's 
aid, finds a publisher ; the theme of " Paracelsus" was sug- 
gested to Browning by Count Ripart Monclar (" Amedee "), 
a warm friend of his, who was then in London acting as the 
private agent of the royal French exiles then sojourning in 



BROWNING 66 1 

England; " Paracelsus " is called "rubbish" by a critic in 
the Athenceum, but is warmly defended by John Forster in the 
Examiner — a service that results in the formation of a lasting 
friendship between Browning and Forster; about 1835 the 
poet's father removes from Camber well to a house in Hatcham, 
where he finds more room for his library of 6,000 volumes, 
and where Browning makes a pet of a garden toad, immortal- 
ized in one of the poems of " Asolando ; " soon after the re- 
moval to Hatcham Browning enters upon friendly relations 
with Carlyle, and makes the acquaintance of Talfourd, Home, 
Leigh Hunt, Proctor, Milnes, Dickens, Wordsworth, and 
Landor, all of whom he meets frequently at dinner at the 
homes of Talfourd, Fox, and Macready ; at these dinners new 
plays and poems often had their first reading ; in December, 
1835, Browning and Forster are entertained by Macready at 
his country home at Elstree, and a warm friendship exists 
thereafter between the actor and the poet ; while at Elstree 
Browning meets Miss Haworth, the " Eyebright " of " Sor- 
dello," and the friend to whom were addressed some of the 
best of his letters now extant ; at a dinner in Macready's 
house May 26, 1836, where Wordsworth, Talfourd, Landor, 
and Miss Mitford are present, Macready suggests to Browning 
the composition of a drama; the result is his "Strafford," 
which was presented by Macready and his company at the 
Co vent Garden Theatre May 1, 1837, and had a short but 
successful course ; it had been published during the previous 
April by Longman, and was the first of Browning's works for 
whose publication he did not pay ; at this period he is de- 
scribed by a friend as " just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to 
lemon-colored kid gloves and such things;" he works at 
" Sordello " during the remainder of 1837 and, in the spring 
of 1838, starts on his first journey to Italy ; landing at Trieste, 
he visits Venice, Treviso, Bassano, Asolo, Vicenza, Padua, 
Verona, and then Trent, Innspriick, Munich, Salzburg, Frank- 
fort, Mayence, going thence down the Rhine to Cologne and 



662 BROWNING 

back to London by way of Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, and Ant- 
werp ; while at Trieste he wrote "How they Brought the 
Good News from Ghent to Aix " (in pencil on the cover of a 
book) and " Home Thoughts by the Sea; " the impressions 
received during this tour at Asolo and at Venice appeared 
later in " Pippa Passes " and "In a Gondola." 

In 1839 Browning first meets the old boyhood school-friend 
of his father, Mr. Kenyon, at whose home he frequently met 
Wordsworth thereafter, and who was to have a peculiar rela- 
tion to the Brownings' future career; in 1840 he publishes 
"Sordello," which was longer in preparation than any other 
of his poems ; Browning afterward declared that in writing 
" S'ordello " his " stress had lain on the incidents in the de- 
velopment of a soul, little else being, to his mind, worthy of 
study; " the undue condensation of thought in " Sordello," 
and its consequent obscurity, are due largely to a criticism 
made on his " Paracelsus " by John Sterling and repeated by 
Miss Haworth to Browning ; he seems to have taken the crit- 
icism too seriously ; in 1841 " Pippa Passes " appears as the 
first of a series of cheap pamphlets published by Moxon un- 
der the title of "Bells and Pomegranates" — a title that 
Browning condescended to explain in the last number as " a 
most familiar patristic phrase for a mixture of poetry with 
thought, or of faith with good works; " the other poems of 
Browning published under the title " Bells and Pomegranates," 
with their respective dates, are as follows : " King Victor and 
King Charles," 1842 ; " Dramatic Lyrics," 1842, including 
the " Cavalier Tunes," " Marching Along," " Give a Rouse," 
"Boots and Saddles," originally called "My Wife Ger- 
trude," and " Italy and France," "Camp and Cloister," " In 
a Gondola,' ' "Artemis Prologizes," "Waring," "Queen 
Worship," "Madhouse Cells," "Through the Metidja to 
Abd-el-Kadr, " and " The Pied Piper of Hamelin ; " " The 
Return of the Druses," 1843 ; "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 
1843; " Colombe's Birthday," 1844 ; " Dramatic Romances 



BROWNING 663 

and Lyrics," including " How they Brought the Good News 
from Ghent to Aix," " Pictor /gnotus," " Italy in England," 
" England in Italy," "The Lost Leader," "The Lost Mis- 
tress," "Home Thoughts from Abroad," "The Tomb at 
St. Praxed's," "Garden Fancies," "France and Spain," 
"The Flight of the Duchess," "Earth's Immortalities," the 
song " Nay, But You Who Do Not Love Her," " The Boy 
and the Angel," " Night and Morning," " Claret and To- 
kay," "Saul," "Time's Revenges," and "The Glove;" 
" Luria, a Soul's Tragedy," 1846 ; " A Blot on the 'Scutch- 
eon " was written in fifteen days for Macready, who meant to 
play a principal part in the drama when produced; from a 
statement made by Browning forty years later it now appears 
that, owing either to Macready's jealousy or to his financial 
straits, the play was not fairly staged or well treated ; the 
result was a severance of the friendship between Browning and 
Macready ; a letter written to John Forster about this time 
expressing his " almost passionate admiration " for "A Blot 
on the 'Scutcheon," was withheld from Browning and from 
the public by Forster for thirty years ; " Colombe's Birth- 
day " was played with fair success in 1853; four of the 
" Dramatic Lyrics " had been published previously in the 
Monthly Repository and six of the " Dramatic Lyrics and 
Romances " in Hood 's Magazine ', for the sake of financial aid 
to Hood, then in his last illness ; Browning never afterward 
wrote for the magazines except from philanthropic motives, as 
when he published " Herve Riel " in the Cornhill Magazine 
in 1870 for the benefit of the sufferers in the Franco- Prussian 
War ; he has recorded of " Artemis Prologizes " that " it was 
composed much against my endeavor, while in bed with a 
fever;" "Christina," originally called "Queen Worship," 
was dedicated to the Spanish Queen ; " The Pied Piper of 
Hamelin" and "The Cardinal and the Dog" were written 
to amuse Willie, the child of Macready, who was then con- 
fined to the house with illness, and who undertook to " il- 



664 BROWNING 

lustrate " these poems for Browning; "The Lost Leader" 
expressed Browning's sentiments at the time about what he 
considered to be Wordsworth's " abandonment of liberalism 
at an unlucky juncture," although he afterward referred to the 
poem " with something of shame and contrition." 

In the autumn of 1844 Browning starts again for Italy, sail- 
ing to Naples and travelling thence to Rome ; on his return 
from Rome he calls on Trelawney at Leghorn, and in the fol- 
lowing year he records some reminiscences of this tour in his 
" Englishman in Italy ; " his own and his father's friend, John 
Kenyon, was a cousin of Elizabeth Barrett, and he had fre- 
quently spoken to the Brownings of her and had presented 
them with copies of her poems ; on Browning's return from 
Italy, in 1844, he expresses such admiration for her "Lady 
Geraldine's Courtship " that Kenyon begs him to write to the 
author andtoexpress to her personally his appreciation, adding, 
" My cousin is a great invalid, and sees no one, but great souls 
jump at sympathy; " the result is the beginning of Brown- 
ing's correspondence with Miss Barrett ; after a few months, 
against her own inclinations, he prevails upon her to allow 
him to visit her, although she calls herself " only a weed, fit for 
the ground and darkness; " the visit seals Browning's matri- 
monial fate: love succeeds to pity, and, after persistently re- 
peating a proposition of marriage, he is accepted on the con- 
dition that she regain her health ; the two poets meet three 
times a week, but the visits are unknown beyond the two 
families and Mr. Kenyon ; late in the summer of 1846 Miss 
Barrett, who had partially recovered, was assured by her phy- 
sician that a more complete recovery depended on her remov- 
al to a warmer climate ; her father, doubtless believing her 
incurable, refused to permit her to go south, and she conse- 
quently broke with him and her family and was married to 
Browning in strict privacy on the 12th of September, 1846, 
at St. Pancras Church, London, without either the knowledge 
or the consent of her father ; at this time Browning, though 



BROWNING 665 

thirty-four years of age, expressed to Miss Barrett a will- 
ingness to render himself more eligible as a husband by 
studying for the bar, but she insisted that he continue to de- 
vote himself to literature ; for a few days the husband and wife 
return, respectively, to their own homes, and on the evening 
of September 19th they sail secretly for Paris, by way of Havre, 
accompanied by Mrs. Browning's maid and her immortal dog, 
" Flush; " Mrs. Browning had been healthy as a child, but 
had injured her spine by a fall in her thirteenth year ; Brown- 
ing's family are at first much disturbed by his marriage to such 
an invalid, but they soon welcome her to their hearts and 
homes; her own father remains unforgiving and unreconciled 
till his death ; in Paris the Brownings meet Mrs. Jameson, 
who goes with them to Genoa, whence they go, soon, to Pisa 
and settle there for the winter ; as Browning destroyed most 
of his letters to his family shortly before his death, the details 
of their early married life are unknown, except so far as may 
be gleaned from Mrs. Browning's letters to Miss Mitford, to 
whom she writes from Paris: " He has drawn me back to 
life and hope again when I had done with both." 

They leave Pisa in April, 1847, for Florence, where they first 
spend five days with the monks of Vallombrosa, and then 
establish themselves in the city, where they enter into close 
social relations with Powers, the American sculptor ; during 
the winter of 1847-48 they occupy apartments in the Palazzo 
Pitti at Florence, just opposite the Pitti Palace ; early in 
1848 Browning is severely ill, and refuses to consult a phy- 
sician, but, during a chance call, Father Prout prescribes for 
him and restores him to health ; in the summer of 1848 the 
Brownings take and permanently furnish " six beautiful rooms 
and a kitchen " in the Guidi Palace, opposite the church of 
San Felice; in July, 1848, Mrs. Browning reports herself 
" quite well again and strong;" during this summer they 
sojourn briefly at Fano and at Ancona ; on March 9, 1849, 
Browning's son is born, just at the time of the sudden death 



666 BROWNING 

of the poet's mother, to whom he had remained passionately 
attached from his infancy; the shock nearly undermines his 
health, and, with his wife, he seeks recuperation in a tour along 
the coast to Spezzia and thence to the Baths of Lucca, where 
they remain till October ; at Lucca Mrs. Browning is " able to 
climb the hills with Robert and help him lose himself in the 
forests ; " they return to Florence late in the autumn of 1849, 
and live very quietly " retreated from the advances of the 
English society here;" in the summer of 1850 they visit 
Venice, which Mrs. Browning finds "celestial" and "inef- 
fable," but the climate proves bad for Browning, and they re- 
main but a few weeks ; during 1850 they are on intimate 
terms with Margaret Fuller Ossoli, who is at their house daily 
till she sails on her fatal homeward voyage ; in the summer of 
185 1 they return for the first time since their marriage to 
London, where Browning commemorates his marriage by 
kissing the paving-stones in front of St. Pancras Church ; 
Mrs. Browning's father refuses to see either her or her child ; 
in the autumn of 185 1 they go to Paris in company with Car- 
lyle, and settle at 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees, where 
Carlyle frequently visits them ; at this period Browning is of 
much service to Carlyle, as the Scotchman did not under- 
stand French ; while in Paris the Brownings see much of 
George Sand, and have Beranger for a near neighbor ; during 
this winter they also meet Joseph Milsand, who commends 
Browning's poetry in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; he after- 
ward becomes one of Browning's warmest friends, and is a 
frequent visitor at the poet's apartments ; the first reprint of 
" Sordello," in 1863, was dedicated to Milsand, as were 
"Parleyings with Certain People," published in 1867, within 
a year after Milsand's death ; in December, 1848, Browning 
had issued new editions of " Paracelsus " and the " Bells and 
Pomegranates" poems ; while in Florence in 1850 he wrote 
"Christmas Eve and Easter Day," and while at Paris, in 
December, 1851, his essay on Shelley, in which he justifies 



BROWNING 667 

that poet's life and character as he saw them then ; this essay 
was largely based on twenty-five supposed letters of Shelley, 
soon afterward discovered to be spurious. 

In the summer of 1852 the Brownings return to London, 
and lodge at 58 Welbeck Street; about this time the poet first 
comes into close relations with D. G. Rossetti, who had long 
been an admirer of his poetry ; during the winter of 1852-53 
the Brownings are again at Florence in Casa Guldi, and there, 
early in 1853, they are rejoiced by the news that " Colombe's 
Birthday" has been successfully produced in London; the 
summer of 1853 is passed at Lucca, where they meet Story, 
the American sculptor and poet, between whose family and 
themselves an intimate friendship exists thereafter; while at 
Lucca during this summer Browning writes "In a Balcony," 
" By the Fireside," and some of the " Men and Women; " 
he also entertains Lord Lytton there for a fortnight ; in the 
autumn of 1853 the Brownings make their first visit to Rome, 
where they lodge at 43 Via Bocca di Leone, in rooms secured 
for them by the Storys ; at Rome they meet Fanny Kemble, 
Thackeray, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lockhart, and Browning's 
portrait is painted by Fisher; they leave Rome early in the 
spring of 1854, on account of the ill health of their child, and 
return to Florence ; they seem to have remained in Florence 
till the spring or early summer of 1855, when they returned 
again to London, taking rooms at 13 Dorset Street, Poland 
Square; at these rooms, on the 27th of September, 1855, 
Tennyson reads his new poem " Maud " to Mrs. Browning, 
while Rossetti, the only other listener, makes his now famous 
pen-and-ink drawing of Tennyson ; in 1855 Rossetti painted 
Browning's portrait ; during this summer the Brownings visit 
Ruskin at Denmark Hill, and see his Turner pictures; at 
these London rooms, in September, 1854, Browning writes 
"One Word More " and perhaps some of the fifty poems 
called " Men and Women," which he published in two vol- 
umes late in 1855 ; he goes, with his family, to Paris again 



668 BROWNING 

for the winter of 1855-56 ; his sister goes with them, and they 
all see much of Lady Elgin during the winter ; during this 
winter Mrs. Browning wrote " Aurora Leigh," scribbling the 
verses on scraps of paper wherever she happened to be, and 
hiding them in the folds of her dress if she was interrupted. 

On the death of their mutual friend Kenyon, in December, 
1856, the Brownings received from his estate, jointly, 10,- 
000 guineas, though they received nothing from the estate of 
Mrs. Browning's father, who died about the same time ; dur- 
ing 1857 Mrs. Browning begins her regular correspondence 
with her husband's sister, which has since become so valuable 
as biographical material because of the destruction of Brown- 
ing's own letters ; the winter of 1856-57 seems to have been 
passed at Rome and the following summer again at the Baths 
of Lucca, in company with Lytton ; about this time arose the 
well-known difference between Browning and his wife in refer- 
ence to spiritualism — a kindly disagreement, which gave rise, 
eventually, to his poem, "Sludge, the Medium;" in the 
summer of 1858 they are at Havre with Browning's sister' and 
father ; during the winter and spring following they seem to 
have been at Florence and Rome; in July, 1859, they are at 
or near S.ena, where the Storys are their neighbors, and where 
Browning becomes a kind of guardian to Walter Savage Lan- 
dor, who had found life with his family at Fiesole " unendur- 
able ; " Landor's friends in England send to Browning, annu- 
ally thereafter, enough to support the old " lion," and he is 
placed in apartments next door to the Casa Guidi home in 
Florence, in a house kept by two former servants of the Brown- 
ings, who had married and established themselves there ; about 
this time the poet forms a close friendship with Leighton, the 
artist; the Brownings spend the winter of 1859-60 in Rome, 
where he gives much time to modelling in clay ; both he and 
his wife are much affected at this period by the indifference 
of the English public to his poetry, while they are encouraged 
by the appreciation shown in America ; during the winter of 



BROWNING 669 

1859-60 he obtains, through the aid of two artist friends, a 
close insight into the popular and picturesque aspects of Roman 
life, and comes much under the influence of the Storys ; dur- 
ing this winter in Rome he also dines, by invitation, with the 
Prince of Wales, and meets Cardinal Manning; the Brown- 
ings are again at Siena during the summer of i860 and at 
Rome during the following autumn ; while in Rome at this 
time Mrs. Browning's health is seriously affected by the sudden 
death of her sister, especially as telegrams concerning her sis- 
ter's illness had been intercepted by the Government because 
the poets were suspected of liberal tendencies ; they return to 
Florence late in 1861, and Mrs. Browning dies there suddenly 
and painlessly on June 29th of that year ; she had been suffer- 
ing from a slight pulmonary weakness, but her death seems to 
have been directly due to the shock caused by the death of 
Cavour, whom she almost worshipped as the redeemer of Italy ; 
Browning is greatly aided at this time of trial by Miss Isa 
Blagden, herself an author of some note, whose beautiful 
home in Florence was long the centre of English society there ; 
he spends at her home the month following his wife's death, 
and then decides permanently to abandon "housekeeping," 
saying, " My root is taken ; " late in July, 1861, accompanied 
by Miss Blagden and his son, he leaves Florence for Paris, 
where he resides for a while at 151 rue de Gre?ielle St. Ger- 
main ; he then spends two months at St. Enogat, near Dinard, 
with his father and sister ; thence he goes to London, where, 
after a few months of boarding, he decides that the son must 
have a home, and so sends to Florence for his furniture, and 
establishes himself at a house in Warwick Crescent, near the 
home of his wife's sister ; he dislikes London intensely at first, 
and remains there only for his son's sake, always hoping event- 
ually to return to Italy, where he wished to spend his last 
days ; at this period he passes his evenings with Mrs. Brown- 
ing's sister, a philanthropist, for whom he writes his poem 
" The Twins " (republished in 1855 in " Men and Women"), 



670 BROWNING 

to be used in her " Plea for the Ragged Schools of London ; " 
he spends the summer of 1862 at Cam bo and Biarritz, among 
the Pyrenees, where he has, as he says, ' ' a great read at Eu- 
ripides, the only book I brought with me," and where he 
plans "The Ring and the Book," besides writing parts of 
" Dramatis Personce " and " In a Balcony; " at this time he 
indignantly repulses several propositions by people who wish 
to write biographies of Mrs. Browning, and even threatens 
legal proceedings to prevent them from publishing her letters ; 
during 1863 Browning publishes a three-volume edition of his 
works, including " Sordello " but omitting "Pauline;" in 
November, 1862, B. W. Procter and John Forster had pub- 
lished a volume of selections from his poems as a tribute from 
" two friends," in the preface of which they referred to him 
as " among the few great poets of the century ; " Browning 
repays his poet-friend Procter, during Procter's old age and 
complete deafness, by visiting him weekly with his son; Brown- 
ing spends the summers of 1864 and 1865 at St. Marie, near 
Pornic in Brittany ; his window at his Pornic lodgings be- 
comes "the doorway " of the poem "James Lee's Wife; " 
on the evening of February 12, 1864, he meets Tennyson, 
Gladstone, and several other eminent men at a dinner party 
given by Francis Palgrave in his home in Regent's Park ; dur- 
ing this evening Browning signs his will, making Tennyson 
and Palgrave witnesses to that instrument; about this time, 
speaking of the neglect of himself and his works by the Eng- 
lish public for the previous twenty-five years, Browning writes 
to a friend: "As I begun, so I shall end — taking my own 
course, pleasing myself, or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I 
hope, pleasing God. . . . I never did otherwise ; I never 
had any fear as to what I did going utterly to the bad — hence, 
in collected editions, I always repeated everything, smallest 
and greatest;" during the winter of 1866 he again meets 
Carlyle ; after the death of Browning's father, on June 14, 
1866, the poet's sister becomes a member of his household 



BROWNING 671 

and his inseparable companion ; they spend the summer of 
1866 at St. Malo and LeCroisic, the scene of " Herve Riel ;" 
in June, 1867, Oxford confers on Browning the degree of 
A.M. (" hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time, except to kings 
and royal personages") and in the following December he 
is made an honorary fellow of Balliol College ; in 1873, when 
the lord rectorship of St. Andrew's University becomes vacant 
by the death of J. S. Mill, it is tendered to Browning, but 
he declines the honor ; he spends the summer of 1867 again 
at Le Croisic ; in the summer of 1868, after visiting several 
French watering-places, he settles, with his family, at Au- 
dierne near Finisterre in Brittany. 

In the autumn of 1868 Smith & Elder publish a six-volume 
edition of his works and in the following winter the first two 
volumes of " The Ring and the Book " — a poem that Brown- 
ing always speaks of in his letters as "my murder poem ; " in 
the spring of 1869 the third and fourth volumes of "The 
Ring and the Book" appear, and at last Browning comes 
into his own, and is fully recognized by the English public ; 
the Athenaum called " The Ring and the Book " " the most 
precious and profound spiritual treasure that England has pro- 
duced since the days of Shakespeare ; " the main story of the 
poem is founded on fact ; Browning found the tale in an old 
manuscript in a bookstall at Florence shortly before his wife's 
death, and read it carefully eight times before putting the story 
into verse ; he worked on the poem from 1864 to 1869 ; Pom- 
pilia, in "The Ring and the Book," reflects in many ways 
the character of Mrs. Browning ; from 1869 to 187 1 Brown- 
ing publishes nothing ; in April, 1870, he writes the sonnet 
" Helen's Tower," in memory of Lord DurTerin's mother — 
a poem published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1883 ; in the 
summer of 1869, with his sister and his son, he joins the Storys 
in a tour through Scotland; the summer of 1870 finds them 
a^ain in a fishing village of Brittany — St. Aubin, whence the 
exigencies of the Franco-Prussian War soon compel them to re- 



6^2 BROWNING 

turn hastily, taking a cattle-boat by night from Honfleur ; in 
March, 187 1, Browning writes " Herve Riel," and sells it to 
the Cornhill Magazine for 100 guineas for the benefit of the 
French sufferers in the war ; in proposing this sale, he writes 
to his publishers concerning " Herve Riel," " I like it better 
than most things I have done of late; " in August, 187 1, he 
publishes " Balaustion's Adventure," and in the December 
following "Prince Hohenstiel Schwangau," which had been 
written in Scotland; fourteen hundred copies of ''Prince 
Hohenstiel Schwangau " were sold within five days after pub- 
lication and before any review of the poem had appeared ; 
twenty-five hundred copies of " Balaustion's Adventure " were 
sold within the first five months. 

In the spring of 1872 Browning publishes, with some mis- 
givings, " Fifine at the Fair " — a poem which his biographer 
later calls "a piece of perplexing cynicism, . . . froth 
thrown up by Browning's poetic imagination during the 
prolonged simmering which was to leave it clearer;" there 
seems to be no ground for attributing to Browning the senti- 
ments ascribed to the hero in " Fifine at the Fair ; " his real 
attitude toward questions of this kind is shown by the fact 
that he withdrew the admiration of forty years from Shelley 
when he learned that that poet had been heartless toward his 
first wife. 

While at St. Aubin again, in the summer of 1872, Brown- 
ing meets Anne Thackeray Ritchie, who suggests to him a 
title for the poem for which he was then gathering materials — 
" The Red Cotton Night-Cap Country ; " he began this poem 
late in the winter of 1872, and finished it in the early autumn 
of 1873, just before going again to St. Aubin ; for a time be- 
tween 1870 and 1880 he enters into " the fashionable routine 
of country-house visiting," but he is most interested in the 
musical art, attending " every important concert of the Lon- 
don season" and sacrificing all other engagements to these; 
his frequent companion on these occasions was Mrs. Egerton- 



BROWNING 673 

Smith, the " A. E. S." of the poem " La Saiziaz" an ac- 
complished musician, whom he had known in Italy ; with 
her death, in 1877, he ceased to pay attention to music; in 
the summer of 1874, at the suggestion of Mrs. Smith, the 
Brownings unite with her in a joint housekeeping scheme at 
Mers near Freport on the French coast ; they follow the same 
plan in 1875 at Villers, in 1876 at the Isle of Arran, and in 
1877 at a house called " La Saiziaz," near Geneva. 

During the autumn of 1874 Browning works on " Aris- 
tophanes' Apology," writing at Mers and " living with the 
great Greek ; " it is a strange fact that, with all his success 
in revealing the spirit of Aristophanes and Euripides, he uni- 
formly refused to regard the great Greek- writers as models of 
literary style ; while at Villers, in 1875, he corrects the proofs 
of "The Inn Album," which is published in the following 
November; in the autumn of 1876 he has completed " Pac- 
chiarotto ; " during his later years he makes few visits except 
to Oxford and Cambridge, where he occasionally sojourned, es- 
pecially at Balliol College, till the end of his life ; at Oxford 
he comes into close touch with Jowett, Lord Coleridge, and 
Matthew Arnold ; in 1875 he is unanimously nominated lord 
rector of the University of Glasgow, and in 1877 he is again 
tendered the lord rectorship of St. Andrews, but he declines 
both honors, perhaps because he was never inclined to public 
speaking ; while at La Saiziaz, in August, 1877, he is greatly 
shocked by the sudden death of Mrs. Smith — " a moral thun- 
derbolt " — and the experience finds expression in the poem 
" La Saiziaz" written soon afterward and published in the 
summer of 1878 with " Two Poets of the Croisic ; " this 
poem best expresses Browning's "hope of immortality;" 
the events in "Two Poets of the Croisic" are strictly his- 
torical. 

In August, 1878, Browning and his sister start on their 
long-contemplated visit to Italy ; they go by way of the 
Spliigen, and spend some time at a hotel near the summit, 
43 



674 BROWNING 

where he works with unusual rapidity, writing " Ivan Ivano- 
vitch " and several other of his " Dramatic Idylls; " they 
go thence to Asolo, stopping briefly at Como and Verona ; 
after a month at Asolo they go to Venice, where they take 
lodgings in the Albergo del Universo, or Palazzo Brandolin- 
Rota on the shady side of the Grand Canal — a house that be- 
came their annual autumn resting-place for seven years there- 
after ; the autumns of 188 1 and 1882 are spent at Saint Pierre 
la Chartreuse and those of 1883 and 1885 at Grissoney Saint 
Jean ; in the autumn of 1880 Mrs. Arthur Bronson, an Amer- 
ican friend of the Brownings, places at their disposal a suite 
of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, which formed 
a supplement to her own house ; they keep house here again 
in 1885 ; in 1888 Mrs. Bronson gives to them apartments in 
her own house — a service commemorated by Browning in the 
preface to " Asolando ; " in the salon of Mrs. Bronson the 
Brownings frequently meet Don Carlos and his family, Prince 
and Princess Iturbide, the Princess of Montenegro, Prince and 
Princess Metternich, Sir Henry and Lady Layard, and other 
persons of note ; in 1879 Browning publishes his "Dramatic 
Lyrics," which are received " with a thrill of suppressed ad- 
miration ; " this volume included " Earth's Immortalities," 
" The Boy and the Angel," " Meeting at Night," " Parting 
at Morning," "Saul," and " Time's Revenges ; " in 1880 
he publishes a second series of selections from his works. 

In the summer of 1881 Dr. (then Mr.) Furnival and Miss 
Hickey organize the London Browning Society, with the 
poet's knowledge but without approval or encouragement from 
him ; he had himself long been president of the Shakespeare 
Society and a member of the Wordsworth Society ; in No- 
vember, 1883, he writes his sonnet to Goldoni, actually scrib- 
bling it off while a messenger is waiting for it; in 1884 he 
again declines an invitation for the lord rectorship of St. An- 
drew's, receives the degree of LL.D. from the University of 
Edinburgh, and is made honorary president of the Associated 



BROWNING 675 

Societies of Edinburgh ; in 1884 he writes the sonnets " The 
Founder of the Feast " and " The Names " and in 1886 
" Why I am a Liberal ; " in 1885 his son visits Italy for the 
first time since his mother's death, and is so charmed, as an 
artist, with Venice that Browning decides to buy a home and 
settle there permanently ; he bargains for the Palazzo Man- 
zoni on the Grand Canal, but the contract is broken by friends 
of the original owner ; at this time Browning writes : " I my- 
self shall stick to London, which has been so eminently good 
and gracious to me, so long as God permits; only, when the in- 
evitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body (I shall not 
believe in his reaching my soul and proper self), there will be 
a capital retreat provided ; " not long afterward his son buys 
for the family the Rezzonico Palazzo, and so the " retreat" is 
provided; the Brownings spend the summer of 1884 at St. 
Moritz at the villa of an American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield 
Moore ; in 1886, owing to the feeble health of Miss Brown- 
ing, they go only as far as Llangollen, in Wales, where the 
poet varies his usual London custom by attending regularly 
the Sunday afternoon service in the little parish church ; a 
memorial tablet has since been placed on the spot where he 
worshipped ; the death of Browning's most intimate friend, 
Joseph Milsand, in 1888, and the successive demise, about this 
time, of Miss Haworth, Dickens, Procter, John Forster, Car- 
lyle, Lord Houghton, and others deeply affects him ; he 
greatly reverenced Carlyle, often visited him during his last 
days at Chelsea, and after his death defended him vigorously 
against the charge of unkindness to his wife ; in the spring of 
1886 Browning is made Corresponding Secretary of the Royal 
Academy, and early in 1887 he publishes " Parleyings with 
Certain Poets; " in June, 1887, he removes from Warwick 
Crescent to De Vere Gardens to a house more sheltered, more 
conveniently situated, and more modern in construction than 
his former residence ; here his son is married in December, 
1887, to a New York -lady, and here in the large rooms the 



6y6 BROWNING 

poet arranges the fine specimens of antique furniture that he 
had been gathering for years. 

In the summer of 1887, with his sister, he is again the guest 
of Mrs. Moore at St. Moritz ; one of his last occupations during 
his last winter in London was his arrangement of his father's 
library of 6,000 volumes and his own library in the new cases 
at the new home ; he still continues to dine out, to visit 
every art exhibition, and to answer all correspondents, writing 
daily till his fingers ache ; in December, 1887, he writes 
" Rosny," " Beatrice Signori," " Flute Music," and two or 
three of the " Bad Dreams ; " in 1888 he begins revising his 
poems for the last and now complete edition, the last volume 
of which was not published till 1889 ; the greatest change 
made in any poem at this time was in "Pauline," which he 
then calls " the only poem which makes me out youngish ; " 
in August, 1888, he joins his son at Priziero, near Feltre, in 
Italy — a place that he calls " the most beautiful that I was 
ever resident in ; " soon afterward they all go to the palace 
home in. Venice, which the son had fitted up in excellent 
style ; before and during this journey to Italy Browning was 
seriously ill, but he recovered before reaching Venice ; he re- 
turns to London late in the autumn of 1888, and makes his an- 
nual visit to Oxford ; in August, 1889, he starts on his last trip 
to Venice, stopping for several weeks at Asolo, as the guest 
again of his American friend, Mrs. Bronson ; before leaving 
Asolo he enters into negotiations for the purchase of a piece 
of land belonging to the old castle, where he proposes to 
build a summer home to be christened " Pippa Passes ; " the 
negotiations are delayed by political considerations, and are 
completed only on the -day of the poet's death ; he reaches 
Venice late in October ; early in November he takes a severe 
cold while taking his daily walk on the Lido ; he dies at the 
Rezzonico Palazzo, December 12, 1889 ; at the suggestion of 
the Dean of Westminster, the poet's body is sent for inter- 
ment in Westminster Abbey, though not till after a very im- 



BROWNING 677 

posing funeral service conducted by the city of Venice ; later, 
a bronze tablet was placed by that city in the palace where 
Browning died ; besides the name and date of birth and death, 
this tablet bears these lines from one of his poems : 

" Open my heart, and you will see 
Graved inside of it, ' Italy.' " 

The city of Florence also marked with a tablet the house 
where the Brownings lived during their residence in that 
city ; " Asolando " was published on the day of Browning's 
death. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BROWNING. 

Hutton, R. H., H Literary Essays." London, 1888, Macmillan, 

188-240. 
Dowden, E., "Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 

Trench & Co., 474-525. 
Bagehot, W., "Works." Hartford, 1889, Traveller's Insurance Co., 

238-253. 
Stedman, E. C, "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 293-342. 
Mabie, H.W., "Essays in Literary Interpretation." New York, 1892, 

Dodd, Mead & Co., 99-137 and 191-239. 
Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 

Co., 191-259. 
Saintsbury, G., "Corrected Impressions." New York, 1895, Dodd, 

Mead & Co., 98-116. 
Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
taker, 297-329. 
Birrell, A., " Obiter Dicta:' New York, 1887, Scribner, 55-95. 
Ritchie, A. T. , " Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning." New 

York, 1892, Harper, 129-190. 
Corson, H., " Introduction to Browning." Boston, 1886, D. C. Heath 

& Co. 
Fawcett, E., " Agnosticism and Other Essays." Chicago, 1889, Belford, 

Clark & Co., 106-147. 
MacDonald, G., " The Imagination and Other Essays. " Boston, 1883, 

Lothrop, 195-217. 
McCrie, G., "The Religion of Our Literature." London, 1875, Hodder 

& Stoughton, 69-109. 



678 BROWNING 

Berdoe, E., " Browning's Message to His Time." New York, 1891, 

Macmillan,. v. index. 
Burt, M. E., "Browning's Women." Chicago, 1897, C. H. Kerr & 

Co., v. index. 
Cooke, G. W., "A Guide-Book to the Poetry of Browning." Boston, 

1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
Sharp, W., "Life of Robert Browning." London, 1890, Walter Scott. 
Devey, J., "Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 376-421. 
James, H., "Essays in London." New York, 1893, Harper, 222-229. 
Wilson, F. M., "A Primer on Browning." London, 1891, Macmillan. 
Wescott, B. F. , " Essays in the History of Religious Thought." London, 

1891, Macmillan, 253-276. 
Revell, W. F. , " Browning's Criticism of Life." London, 1892, Swan, 

Sonnenschein & Co., v. index. 
Jones, H., " Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher." New 

York, 1891, Macmillan, v. index. 
Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature and Life." New York, 1891, 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , 276-296. 
Cooke, G. W., "Poets and Problems." Boston, 1886, Ticknor & Co., 

271-388. 
Burroughs, J., "Indoor Studies." Boston, 1893, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 239. 
Alexander, W. J., " Introduction to the Poetry of Browning." Boston, 

1889, Ginn. 
Orr, Mrs. S., "Life and Letters of Robert Browning." New York, 

1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
Kingsland, W. G., " Robert Browning." London, 1890, F. W. Jarvis & 

Son, v. index. 
Friswell, J. H., " Modern Men of Letters." London, 1870, Hodder & 

Stoughton, 119-131. 
Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge. 
Dawson, W. J., "The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1891, 

Whittaker, 270-327. 
Thorne, W. H., " Modern Idols." Philadelphia, 1887, Lippincott, 

21-48. 
Mather, J. M., " Popular Studies, etc." London, 1892, Warne, 155-184. 
Morley, J., "Studies in Literature." London, 1891, Macmillan, 255- 

286. 
Oliphant, Mrs., " The Victorian Age of English Literature." New Vork, 

n. d., Tait, I : 218-226. 
Harper's Magazine, 84: 832-855 (A. T. Ritchie). 



BROWNING 679 

Poet Lore, 8:78-84 and 225-233 (W. G. Kingsland) ; 5:258-266 

(W. J. Rolfe). 
Century, 23 : 238-245 (S. A. Brooke) ; 23 : 189 (E. Gosse). 
Poet Lore, 6: 225-238 (G. W. Cooke); 479-490 (W. G. Kingsland); 

2 : 19-26 (H. S. Pancoast) ; 6 : 585-592 (L. A. Sherman); 4: 612- 

616 (G. W. Cooke); 1:553-560 (H. S. Pancoast). 
Contemporary Review, 57: 141- 1 52 (S. A. Brooke); 35: 289-302 (Mrs. 

S. Orr); 60: 70-81 (A. Lang). 
Critic, 15 : 316-318 and 330 (R. H. Stoddard) ; 13 : 93 (A. S. Cook). 
Andover Review, 8 : 131-153 (H. W. Mabie). 
Nation, 53 : 92 (G. E. Woodberry) ; 22 : 49, 50 (H. James, Jr.). 
Literary World (Boston), 21 : 25, 26 and 13 : 76-78 (F. J. Furnivall). 
Academy, 39 : 247 (W. J. Rolfe) ; 23 : 213, 214 (J. A. Symonds). 
Apple toil's Magazine, 6 : 533-536 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Fortnightly Review, 16 : 478-490 (S. Colvin) ; 11 : 331-343 (J. Morley) ; 

I : 548-550 (W. J. Courthope); 3 : 402-406 (B. Taylor). 
Canadian Monthly, 2 : 285-287 (Goldwin Smith). 
North American Review, 66: 357-400 (J. R. Lowell). 
Fraser's Magazine, 76: 518-530 (E. Dowden). 
Good Words, 31 ^7-93 (R. H. Hutton). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Intense Vigor. — " His genius is robust with vigor- 
ous blood, and his tone has the cheeriness of intellectual 
health. . . . His poetry is a tonic; it braces and invig- 
orates. . . . The supple, nervous strength and swiftness 
of the blank verse [in " Bishop Blougram's Apology"] is, in 
its way, as fine as the qualities we have observed in the other 
monologues: there is a splendid 'go' in it, a vast capacity 
for business; the verse is literally alive with meaning and 
packed with thought. * The Worst of It ' is thrill- 

ingly intense and alive; and the swift force and tremulous 
eagerness of its very original rhythm and metre translate its 
sense into sound with perfect fitness. . . . Mr. Brown- 
ing's style is vital; his verse moves to the throbbing of 
an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a machine." — 
John Addington Symonds. 

" He is always masculine and vigorous. Original modern 



680 BROWNING 

poetry is apt to be enervating, producing the effect of intel- 
lectual luxury; or if, like Wordsworth's, it is as cool and 
bright as morning dew, it carries us away from the world to 
mountain solitudes and transcendental dreams. Mr. Brown- 
ing's — while it strains our intellect to the utmost, as all 
really intellectual poetry must, and has none of the luxuriance 
of fancy and wealth of sentiment which relaxes the fibre of the 
mind — keeps us still in a living world; not always the modern 
world, very seldom, indeed, the world of modern England, 
but still in contact with keen, quick, vigorous life." — R. H. 
Hutton. 

" It is somewhat strange that a poet who can, upon occasion, 
show such a fine feeling for rhythm and the music of words, 
should so frequently set both at nought in preference for verses 
which stun the ear with their rudeness — never, though, without 
imparting some sense of admiration for the vigor of the blow." 
— Richard Grant White. 

"What enchants is the speed, the glow, the distinctness, 
the power of each well-placed touch." — Andrew Lang. 

"The chief attraction in Mr. Browning's poems is to be 
found in the solid and vigorous thinking which characterizes 
them and the life which they possess and, consequently, can 
impart." — M. D. Conway. 

" It would be most unjust, however, ... to pass over 
the dignity and splendor of the verse in many places, where 
the intensity of the writer's mood finds worthy embodiment in 
a sustained gravity and vigor and finish of diction not to be 
surpassed. . . . When all is said that can be said about 
the violences which from time to time invade the poem, it 
remains true that the complete work affects the reader most 
powerfully with that wide unity of impressions which it is the 
highest aim of dramatic art — and perhaps of all art — to pro- 
duce." — John Morley. 

" The old fire flashes out, thirty years after, in ' Herve 
Riel,' another vigorous production." — E. C. Stedman. 



BROWNING 68 1 

" Mr. Browning had plenty to say on whatsoever subject he 
took up; and had a fresh, original, vigorous manner of saying 
it. " — George Saintsbury. 

"Life is never life to him except in those hours when it 
rises to a complete outpouring of itself. To live is to experi- 
ence intensely. . . . The singular combination of .great 
intellectual range with passionate intensity of utterance which 
characterizes Browning is explained by the indissoluble union 
in which he holds thought and action." — H. W. Maine. 

"It is the sea in its glory, the storm in its might, the 
mountain in its towering splendor, the heavens in their un- 
utterable depths, which made the style of Browning. 
His poetry is like the strong and resistless force of a great river 
carrying on its bosom mighty ships and many a smaller craft. " 
— G. W. Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Fear death ? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night and the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe ; 

" I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness, and cold." — Prosftice. 

" Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 
One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod, 
One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, 
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 
There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain ; 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 
Never glad confident morning again." — The Lost Leader. 



682 BROWNING 

" It is a lie — their priests, their Pope, 

Their saints, their ... all they fear or hope 

Are lies and lies — there ! thro' my door 

And ceiling, there ! and walls and floor, 

There, lies, theylie, shall still be hurled, 

Till spite of them I reach the world ! 

No part in aught they hope or fear ! 

No Heaven with them, no Hell, — and here, 

No Earth, not so much space as pens 

My body in their worst of dens 

But shall bear God and Man my cry : 

Lies — lies, again — and still, they lie ! " 

— The Ring and the Book. 

2. Analysis of Character — Introspection.— " This 
endeavor is not to set men in action for the pleasure of seeing 
them move, but to see and show, in their action and inaction 
alike, the real impulses of their being; to see how each soul 
conceives of itself. . . . Suppose he is attracted by some 
particular soul or by some particular act. The problem oc- 
cupies him — the more abstruse and entangled the more attrac- 
tive to him it is; he winds his way into the heart of it, or, 
we might better say, he picks to pieces the machinery. 
' Colombe's Birthday ' is mainly concerned with inward 
rather than outward action ; in this the characters themselves, 
what they are in their own souls, what they think of them- 
selves and what others think of them, constitute the chief in- 
terest. . . . It is a result of this purpose, in consonance 
with this practice, that we get in Mr. Browning's works so 
large a number of distinct human types and so great a variety 
of surroundings in which they are placed. Only in Shake- 
speare can we find anything like the same variety of distinct 
human characters — vital creations endowed with thoughtful 
life. . . . The men and women who live and move in 
that new world of his creation are as varied as life itself; they 
are kings and beggars, saints and lovers, great captains, poets, 
painters, musicians, priests and popes, Jews, gypsies and der- 



BROWNING 683 

vishes, street-girls, princesses, dancers with the wicked witch- 
ery of the daughter of Herodias, wives with the devotion of 
the wife of Brutus, joyous girls and malevolent graybeards, 
statesmen, cavaliers and soldiers of humanity, tyrants and 
bigots, ancient sages and modern spiritualists, heretics, schol- 
ars, scoundrels, devotees, rabbis, persons of quality and men 
of low estate — men and women as multiform as nature and 
society has made them." — -John Addington Symonds. 

" His mission has been that of exploring those secret regions 
which generate the forces whose outward phenomena it is for 
the playwrights to illustrate. He has opened a new field for 
the display of emotional power, founding, so to speak, a sub- 
dramatic school of poetry, whose office is to follow the work- 
ings of the mind, to discover the impalpable elements of which 
human motives and passions are composed. . . . Brown- 
ing, as the poet of psychology, escapes to that stronghold 
whither, as I have said, science and materialism are not yet 
prepared to follow him. . . . He has preferred to study 
human hearts rather than the forms of nature. . . . Brown- 
ing was the prophet of that reaction which holds that the 
proper study of mankind is man. His effort, weak or able, 
was at figure-painting in distinction from that of landscape or 
still-life." — E. C. Stedman. 

'* Mr. Browning is not a great dramatist, for in style he 
always remains himself; but he is a great intellectual inter- 
preter of human character. . . . He does enter into 
character as a prelude to the excitement of conflict, but only 
describes the conflict in order to illustrate the character. He 
has the command of motives which is given by a constant 
study of the secrets of the heart, either for saintly and mys- 
tical or for worldly and selfish reasons. ... In the brill- 
iancy of his descriptions of character he has no rival." — R. 
H. Hutton. 

" The subtle genius of a poet whose mastery of psychology 
is universally recognized has marvelous power of penetrating 



684 BROWNING 

the secrets of natures widely dissimilar and of experiences 
which have little in common save that they are a part of life. 
We are irresistibly drawn to him, not only because 
he gives us his view of things, the substance of his personal 
life, but because he makes ourselves clear and comprehensible 
to us. Only those who have carefully studied the 

works ["Paracelsus," " Sordello," etc.] know what aston- 
ishing power is embodied in them, what marvelous subtlety of 
analysis, what masterly grouping and interplay of motives." 
—H. IV. Mabie. 

"We must look to the play itself [" Balaustion's Advent- 
ure "] for an illustration of his . . . facility, to which 
' The Ring and the Book ' gave expression on so monumental 
a scale, for penetrating to the springs of character ; 
and the use of ' Balaustion ' is to add to the outer record a 
coherent and comprehensible version of the inner character 
and motives." — Sidney Colvin. 

"Mr. Browning has interpreted every one of our emo- 
tions, from divine love to human friendship, from the despair 
of the soul to the depths of personal hatred." — Andrew 
Lang. 

" A strong individuality often limits a man, but Browning 
had with it so much imagination that he flung himself — retain- 
ing still his distinctive elements — into a multitude of other 
lives, in various places, and at various times in history. In 
each of these he conceives himself, imagines all the fresh cir- 
cumstances, all the new scenery, all the strange passions and 
knowledge of each age around himself, and creates himself 
afresh as modified by them. It is always Browning, then, who 
writes. . . . Browning has excelled the rest in character- 
making and in the multitude and variety of his characters. 
Nevertheless, Browning always turns up in every character. 
When his characters are men, a sudden turn confronts us in 
them with which we are well acquainted. . . . The 
women are more built up by intellectual analysis based on 



BROWNING 685 

Browning's own emotion — that is, a man's specialized emo- 
tion — than created at a single jet." — Stopford Brooke. 

" He never seems to be telling us what he thinks and feels ; 
but he puts before us some man, male or female, whose indi- 
viduality soon becomes as clear and as absolute as our own. 
The poet does not appear ; indeed, so wholly is he merged in 
the creature of his own will that, as we hear that creature 
speak, his creator is, for the time, completely forgotten." — 
Richard Grant White. 

" [" The Ring and the Book" ] is a great psychological 
poem, evidently written by Mr. Browning for the purpose of 
elucidating the mysteries of.fact and nature and of human ac- 
tion. The incidents . . . afford the fullest scope to the 
poet for the dissection of human passions and the removal of 
the veil which interposes between the heart of man and the 
outer world. . . . His greatest gift [is] that of the ca- 
pacity to read human nature. ... In the dramatic fac- 
ulty and power of psychological analysis his superiority over 
his contemporaries is easily perceived." — G. B. Smith. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" She had 
A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad, 
Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er 
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
Sir, 't was all one ! My favor at her breast, 
The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
The bough of cherries some officious fool 
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
She rode with 'round the terrace — all and each 
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
Or blush, at least. She thanked men — good ! but thanked 
Somehow — I do not know — as if she ranked 
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
With anybody's gift." — My Last Duchess. 



686 BROWNING 

11 He took such cognizance of men and things ; 
If any beat a horse, you felt he saw ; 
If any cursed a woman, he took note ; 
Yet stared at nobody, — you stared at him, 
And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, 
He seemed to know you and expect as much." 

— How it Strikes a Contemporary. 

" I drew them, fat and lean : then, folks at church, 
From good old gossips waiting to confess 
Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends, 
To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, 
Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 
With the little children round him in a row." 

— Fra Lippo Lippi. 

3. Inversion — Obscurity — Chaotic Sentence 

Structure. — " A more completely opaque medium than the 
wording either of his own thoughts or of the author's thoughts 
about him [in " Sordello " ] Talleyrand himself would 
have failed to invent. . . . Mr. Browning rushes upon 
you with a sort of intellectual douche, half stuns you with the 
abruptness of the shock, repeats the application from a multi- 
tude of swift various jets from unexpected points of the com- 
pass, and leaves you at last giddy, and wondering where you 
are; but with a vague sense that, were you properly prepared 
beforehand, you would discern a real unity and power in this 
intellectual water-spout, though its first descent only drenched 
and bewildered your imagination. . . . As to the rela- 
tion of the whole to the part, Mr. Browning's poems are not 
so organized that the parts give you any high gratification till 
you catch a view of the whole. . . . The wording [of 
the " Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister "] . . . is neither 
melodious nor even very lucid for its purpose ; and the parts 

are diminished images of the whole, and hence enig- 
matic until the whole has been two or three times read. 

The obscurity wherein Browning disguises his realism 



BROWNING 6$y 

is but the semblance of imagination ; a mist through which 
rugged details jut out, while the central truth is feebly to be 
seen. . . . Where else is there in Browning, for what 
comes near lyric fire, anything like that apostrophe which 
ends the prologue to ' The Ring and the Book,' the first coup- 
let of which has more of the ring of inspiration than anything 
else in the whole range of his poems, though in the closing 
lines he repasses into that over -com pressed thought which 
makes him at times so obscure." — R. H. Hutton. 

"One half of < Sordello ' — and that, with Mr. Browning's 
usual ill-luck, the first half — is undoubtedly obscure. It is as 
difficult to read as ' Endymion ' or the ' Revolt of Islam,' and 
for the same reason : the author's lack of experience in the 
art of composition." — Augustine Birrell. 

11 We come to no places in ' Sordello ' where we can rest 
and dream or look up at the sky. Ideas, emotions, images, 
analyses, descriptions, still come crowding in. There is too 
much of everything ; we cannot see the wood for the trees. 
The obscurity of ' Sordello ' arises not so much 
from peculiarities of style and the involved structure of occa- 
sional sentences as from the unrelaxing demand which is made 
throughout upon the intellectual and imaginative energy and 
alertness of the reader. . . . There is not a line of the 
poem that is not as full of matter as a line can be." — Edward 
Dow den. 

11 What I have said of the woman's [Mrs. Browning] ob- 
scurity, affectations, elisions, will apply to the man's — with 
his i'ths and o'ths, his dashes, breaks, halting measures, and 
oracular exclamations that convey no dramatic meaning to 
the reader. . . . Parodies on his style, thrown off as 
burlesque, are more intelligible than much of his ' Dramatis 
Personam. ' Unlike Tennyson, he does not comprehend the 
limits of a theme ; nor is he careful as to the relative impor- 
tance of either themes or details ; his mind is so alert that its 
minute turns of thought must be uttered ; he dwells with 



688 BROWNING 

equal precision upon the meanest and grandest objects, and 
laboriously jots down every point that occurs to him — paren- 
thesis within parenthesis — until we have a tangle as intricate 
as the lines drawn by an anemometer upon the recording sheet. 
The poem is all zigzag, crisscross, at odds and ends ; and 
though we come out right at last, strength and patience are 
exhausted in mastering it. Apply the rule that nothing 
should be told in verse which can be told in prose, and half 
his measures would be condemned." — E. C. Stedman. 

" In ' Paracelsus ' the difficulties were in the quantity and 
quality of things; in ' Sordello ' there is the additional dif- 
ficulty of an impracticable style. In proportion to the depth 
or novelty of thought, the poet has chosen to render the vehi- 
cle difficult in which it is conveyed — sometimes by erudite 
elaboration of parenthesis within parenthesis and question 
upon query — sometimes by its levity, jaunty indifference, and 
apparent contempt of everything — sometimes it has an inter- 
minable period or one the right end of which you cannot 
find : a knotted serpent, which either has no discernible tail, 
or has several, the ends of which are in the mouths of other 
serpents or else flanking in the air — sometimes it has a series 
of the shortest possible periods, viz., of one word or of two 
or three words." — R. H. Home. 

" The condensation of style which had marked Mr. Brown- 
ing's previous work and which has marked his later, was here 
[''Sordello"] — in consequence of an unfortunate and most un- 
necessary dread of verbosity, induced by a rash and foolish cri- 
tique — accentuated not infrequently into dislocation. 
Mr. Browning is too much the reverse of obscure, he is only 
too brilliant and subtle." — John Addington Symo/ids. 

" The first time you read many of his poems you make 
scarcely any headway. You begin to question your own san- 
ity and that of the poet. You have lurking doubts as to 
whether you understand the English tongue. . . . He 
was truly the most obscure thinker that ever expressed himself 



BROWNING 689 

in the English language. But his obscurity arises, not from 
the obscurity of the thought, but from its overfulness." — 
H. H. Boyesen. 

" They [his thoughts] are twisted, entangled, and broken 
up in a way that I do not like to call wilful, but which has 
that air." — Stopford Brooke. 

" Ellipsis reigns supreme ; prepositions and relatives are 
dispensed with ; nominatives and accusatives play hide and 
seek 'round verbs ; we get lost in the maze of transpositions 
and stumble over irritating and obscure parentheses." — R. W. 
Church. 

" There can be no doubt that to ' Sordello ' is chiefly at- 
tributable the prevalent idea of Mr. Browning's obscurity as a 
writer. . . . The reader of Mr. Browning must learn 
first of all that he is one of that class of writers whose finest 
thoughts must be often read ' between the lines.' Sometimes 
where a passage seems obscure one has only to pause and re- 
flect what would be the tone in which a certain speech should 
naturally be uttered to find the dark saying light up to one of 
perhaps unusual simplicity." — M. D. Conway. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song 
I, when a girl, heard in Kameiros once, 
And, after, saved my life by ? Oh, so glad 
To tell you my adventures ! Petale, 
Phullis, Charope, Chrusion ! You must know, 
This ' after ' fell in that unhappy time 
When poor reluctant Nikias, pushed by fate, 
Went fluttering against Syracuse." 

— Balaustiorts Adventure. 



n 



Having and holding, till 
I imprint her fast 
On the void at last 
As the sun whom he will 
By the calotypist's skill — 









44 



69O BROWNING 

" Then — if my heart's strength serve, 
And through all and each 
Of the veils I reach 
To her soul and never swerve, 
Knitting an iron nerve — 

" Command her soul to advance 

And inform the shape 

Which has made escape 
And before my countenance 
Answers me glance for glance — 

" I, still with a gesture fit 

Of my hands that best 

Do my soul's behest, 
Pointing the power from it, 
While myself do steadfast sit." — Mesmerism. 

" Its businesses in blood and blaze this year 
But wile the hour away — a pastime slight 
Till he shall step upon the platform right ! 
And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough, 
Proved feasible, be counselled ! thought enough. — 
Slumber, Sordello ! any day will serve : 
Were it a less digested plan ! how swerve 
To-morrow ? " — Sordello. 

4. Fondness for Monologue. — " We see also [in his 
" Dramatic Lyrics "] the first formal beginning of the dramatic 
monologue, which became, from the period of ' Dramatic 
Lyrics ' onward, the staple form and special instrument of 
the poet — an instrument finely touched, at times, by other 
performers, but of which he is the only Liszt. . . . In 
1 Men and Women ' Mr. Browning's special instrument — the 
monologue — is brought to perfection. Such monologues as 
' Andrea del Sarto ' or the ' Epistle of Karshish' never have 
been and probably never will be surpassed, on their own 
ground, after their own order. ... In ' Bishop Blou- 
gram's Apology' the monologue introduces a new element, 
the casuistical. . . . This form — intellectual rather than 



BROWNING 691 

emotional, argumentative more than dramatic — has had from 
this time forward a considerable attraction for Mr. Browning, 
and it is responsible for some of his hardest work, such as 
1 Fifine at the Fair ' and ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.' 
This form of monologue appears in Mr. Browning's 
very earliest poem, and he has developed it more skilfully and 
employed it more consistently than any other writer. Even in 
works like ' Sordello ' and ' The Red Cotton Night-Cap Coun- 
try,' which are thrown into the narrative form, the finest and 
most characteristic parts are in monologue ; and ' The Inn 
Album ' is a series of slightly linked dialogues which are only 
monologues in disguise. Nearly all the lyrics, romances, 
idyls; nearly all the miscellaneous poems, long and short, are 
monologues. And even in the dramas . . . there is 
visibly a growing tendency toward the monologue, with its 
mental and individual, in place of the dialogue with its active 
and various, interests." — John Addington Symonds. 

" Browning is a dramatic thinker, — generally thinking 
within the imaginative fetters of monologue, even when not 
throwing his thoughts into that external form. . . . He 
is a great imaginative apologist rather than either a lyric or 
dramatic poet. . . . The consequence is that he is con- 
stantly tempted to throw his dramatic conceptions into a form 
which rids him altogether of the necessity for a plot. 
They are generally apologetic monologues addressed to a vis- 
ionary but half-indicated auditor. . . . Wherever we 
have a peculiarly jarring metre and jingling rhymes, there Mr. 
Browning is attempting to disguise ... a speech in a 
song, to hide the tight garment of apologetic monologue by 
throwing over it the easy undress of spontaneous feeling." — 
R. H. Hutton. 

" Even in the most conventional, this poet cannot refrain 
from the long monologues, stilted action, and metaphysical 
discussion which mark the closet-drama and unfit a composi- 
tion for the stage." — E. C. Stedman. 



692 BROWNING 

" As part of his method, it should be noted that his real 
trust is upon the monologue rather than upon the dialogue. 
In much the larger number of Browning's poems 
there is but one speaker, so that his method may be properly 
called the monodramatic. The time, the country, the social 
and the moral environment, the situation and character of the 
speaker, are all developed through his words, no clew being 
given to them except in the title of the poem." — G. W. 
Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" And she, — she lies in my hand as tame 
As a pear late basking over a wall ; 
Just a touch to try, and off it came ; 
'T is mine — can I let it fall ? 

" With no mind to eat it, that's the worst ! 

Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist ? 
'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst 
When I gave its stalk a twist. 

" And I, — what I seem to my friend, you see ; 

What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess : 
What I seem to myself, do you ask of me ? 
No hero, I confess. 



a > 



T is an awkward thing to play with souls, 

And matter enough to save one's own : 
Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals 

We played with for bits of stone ! " 

— A Light Woman. 

" You're my friend — 
What a thing friendship is, world without end ! 
How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up 
As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet, 
And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly sunlit, 
Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, 



BROWNING 693 

Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids — 

Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids ; 

Each supplies a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, 

Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts 

Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees 

Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease." 

— The Flight of the Duchess. 

" I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave ; 
You need not clap your torches to my face. 
Zooks, what's to blame ? you think you see a monk ! 
What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, 
And here you catch me at an alley's end 
Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar ? 
The Carmine's my cloister : hunt it up, 
Do — harry out, if you must show your zeal, 
Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, 
And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 
Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company." 

— Fra Lippo Lippi. 

5. Optimism — Robust Fortitude. — In this day of 
languid pessimism, when the columns of our daily press teem 
with records of morbidness, despair, and suicide, to read one 
of Browning's robust lyrics is like drinking in a draught of 
mountain air, uncontaminated by the smoke and dust of civ- 
ilization. No poet better illustrates Lowell's phrase about 
" bracing the moral fibre." 

" Browning is one of the healthiest of modern English poets; 
there is nothing morbid in his writing ; he takes an intensely 
earnest view of life and its duties. Taking the completed 
round of his work, from ' Paracelsus ' to ' Asolando/ the 
reader will find that Browning is essentially optimistic. To 
him life is a glad, sweet thing; so he will rejoice therein and 
be glad. Life is a serious and earnest piece of business — yet 
it is also a beautiful and joyous thing withal, and to be en- 
joyed as the Giver meant it to be." — Augustine BirrelL 



694 BROWNING 

" The key note of his philosophy is : 

4 God's in his heaven, 
All's right with the world ! ' 

He has such a hopefulness of belief in human nature that he 
shrunk from no man, however clothed and cloaked in evil, 
however miry with stumblings and fallings. . . . But 
the test of optimism is its sight of evil. Mr. Browning has 
fathomed it and he can still hope, for he sees the reflection of 
the sun in the depths of every dull pool and puddle. 
The teaching in ' A Bean-Stripe ' is the same that Mr. Brown- 
ing has given us all through his career : the utterance of a 
sturdy but by no means facile optimism, not untried, indeed, 
but unconquerable." — John Addington Symonds. 

" Browning had contempt for hopelessness, hatred for de- 
spair, joy for eager hope, faith in perfection, pity for all effort 
which only claimed this world, for all love which was content 
to begin and end on earth, reproof for all goodness and beauty 
which was content to die forever." — Stopford Brooke. 

11 There is none of the feeble optimism of his age in Brown- 
ing. He is no poet who exults in the enormous preponder- 
ance of good over evil in human life. . . . On the other 
hand, no one has taught more positively than Browning that 
life, if confined to this earth and without any infinite love in 
it, is not the life which has filled the noblest minds with ex- 
ultation, nor, indeed, any shadow of it." — R. H. Hntton. 

" Mr. Browning is an optimist ; but the idea 6f a progress 
of mankind enters into his poems in a comparatively slight 
degree. Mr. Browning makes that progress dependent on the 
productions of higher passions and aspirations, — hopes and 
joys and sorrow." — Edward Dowden. 

" The continuity of civilization and of the life of the hu- 
man spirit, widening by an inevitable and healthful process of 
growth and expansion, evidently enters into all his thought, 
and gives it a certain repose even in the intensity of passion- 



BROWNING 695 

ate utterance. Whatever decay of former ideals and tradi- 
tions his contemporaries may discover and lament, Browning 
holds to the general soundness and wholesomeness of progress, 
and finds each successive stage of growth not antagonistic but 
supplementary to those which have preceded it. 
Though all the world turn pessimist, this singer will still drink 
of the fountains of joy and trace the courses of the streams that 
flow from it by green masses of foliage and the golden glory 
of fruit. . . . Instead of being overwhelmed by the vast- 
ness of modern life, he rejoices in it as the swimmer rejoices 
when he feels the fathomless sea buoyant to his stroke, and 
floats secure, the abysses beneath and the infinity of space over- 
head."—^. W. Mabie. 

" His optimism ... is a conviction which has sus- 
tained the shocks of criticism and the test of facts. Outer 
law and inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the 
same beneficent purpose ; and instead of duty in the sense of 
an autocratic, imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds deep 
beneath man's foolishness and sin a constant tendency toward 
the good which is bound up with the very nature of man's 
reason and will. . . . Carlyle's cry of despair is turned 
by Browning into a song of victory. While the former re- 
gards the struggle between good and evil as a fixed battle, in 
which the forces are immovably interlocked, the latter has 
the consciousness of battling against a retreating foe ; and the 
conviction of coming triumph gives joyous vigor to every 
stroke. . . . He strives hard to come into the misery of 
man in all its sadness ; and, after doing so, he claims, not as 
a matter of poetic sentiment but as a matter of strict truth, 
that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true that he 
cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to 
all the facts any more than the scientific man can justify his 
hypothesis in every detail ; but he holds it as a faith which 
reason can justify and experience establish, although not in 
every isolated phenomenon." — Henry James. 



696 BROWNING 

" One glorious characteristic of his many-sided poetry 
is Mr. Browning's magnificent optimism. 
It is large-sighted and nobly masculine. . . . It is an 
optimism which had been nobly fought for through years of 
neglect, disappointment, poverty, and trial, till it had become 
the supreme conviction of his reason." — F. W. Farrar. 

11 For him there can be no eventual failure; there may be 
often an apparent failure — the soul may be unmade by folly, 
unmanned by evil — but the nobler part of man's nature must 
finally triumph; and the soul will be remade ' in those other 
heights in other lives ' which shall yet be a reality to every 
son of Adam. If a man does fail in his pursuit after Truth or 
Goodness or Beauty, he is not finally overcome ; he has gained 
somewhat — he has endeavored ; for had he not attempted he 
could not have failed : consequently, failure but implies ulti- 
mate success." — William G. Kings land. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

u Then welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go ! 

Be our joys three parts pain ! 

Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! 

" Let us not always say, 
1 Spite of this flesh to-day 
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole !' 
As the bird wings and sings, 
Let us cry, ' All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul ! ' ' 

— Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

11 It's wiser being good than bad ; 

It's safer being meek than fierce ; 
It's fitter being sane than mad. 
My own hope is, a sun will pierce 



BROWNING 697 

The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 
That, after Last returns the First, 

Though a wide compass 'round be fetched ; 
That what began best can't end worst, 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 

— Apparent Failure. 

" God uses us to help each other so, 

Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now, 

Your cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk, 

And trust me but you should, though ! How much more 

If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 

That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, 

Interpret God to all of you ! Oh ! oh ! 

It makes me mad to see what men shall do 

And we in our graves ! This world's no blot for us 

Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good : 

To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 

— Fra Lippo LippL 

6. Strong, Undaunted Religious Faith.— Much has 

been written concerning Browning's religious creed, but there 
seems to be no general agreement in defining it. Certainly 
he was not "orthodox," in the ordinary acceptation of that 
term ; yet it is doubtful if any of the " orthodox " poets, or 
all of them put together, have done so much to lead and lift 
men up to a higher life and to nobler aspirations. A Deist 
Browning certainly is, if not much more. 

"This vivid hope and trust in man is bound up with a 
strong and strenuous faith in God. Mr. Browning's Christi- 
anity is wider than our creeds, and is all the more vitally 
Christian in that it never sinks into pietism. He is never di- 
dactic ; but his faith is the root of his art, and transforms and 
transfigures it." — John Addington Symonds. 

"Browning never faltered in his claim of the spiritual as 
the first, as the master in human nature ; nor in his faith of 
God with us, making, guiding, loving us, and crowning us at 
last with righteousness and love. ... No poets have 



698 BROWNING 

ever been more theological, not even Byron and Shelley. 
[Speaking of Browning and Tennyson.] What original sin 
means and what position man holds on account of it, lies at 
the root of half of Browning's poetry ; and the greater part 
of his very simple metaphysics belongs to the solution of this 
question of the defect in man." — Stopford Brooke. 

" Browning is the modern interpreter of the divine in 
nature and life and history." — R. H. Home. 

" Mr. Browning in this volume [" La Saisiaz : The Two 
Poets of Croisic "] declares that he is ' very sure of God.' It 
is not that he has remained unmoved during the discussion of 
the difficult religious problems of the day. He has evidently 
followed them well, but the circumstances which led to the 
production of ' La Saisiaz ' demonstrated that he could not 
hark back from his robust intellectual and spiritual faith into 
the mists of infidelity. . . . The whole of this poem 
Q" Pippa Passes "] is permeated with that large faith in God 
and in humanity which has always been characteristic of Mr. 
Browning." — G. B. Smith. 

" The difficulties which surround him are not those of a 
casuist but the stubborn questionings of a spirit whose re- 
ligious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. . . . He 
is clearly one of that class of poets who are also prophets. 
He was never merely ' the idle singer of an empty day ' 
but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was intimately bound 
with religious faith and who spoke ' in numbers.' " — Henry 
James. 

"Mr. Browning is pre-eminently the religious poet — 
healthy, manly, brave ; with a hope like Jacob's ladder, reach- 
ing from earth to highest heaven. To him Hope is visible 
the world around. . . . Browning is one of the health- 
iest of English poets; there is nothing morbid in his writing 
— as he himself so recently told us ; of necessity, therefore, he 
takes an intensely earnest view of life and its duties. To him 
this present life is not the playtime but the apprenticeship of 



BROWNING 699 

the soul ; not the place for rest but for good, honest, hearty 
work." — IV. G. Kings land. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I believe it ! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive : 
In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. 
All's one gift : thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my 

prayer, 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air." 

— Saul. 
" Fool ! All that is at all, 
Lasts ever, past recall ; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 
What entered into thee, 
That was, is, and shall be : 
Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay endure. 

" He fixed thee mid this dance 
Of plastic circumstance, 
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : 
Machinery just meant 
To give thy soul its bent, 
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." 

— Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

" Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name ? 
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same ? 
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power ex- 
pands ? 
There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as 
before ; 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good 
more ; 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect 
round." — Abt Vogler. 

7. Grotesqueness — Incongruity. — "Mr. Browning is 
an artist working by incongruity. Possibly hardly one of his 



700 BROWNING 

most considerable efforts can be found which is not great be- 
cause of its odd mixture. He puts together things which no 
one else would have put together. . . . It is very natu- 
ral that a poet whose wishes incline or whose genius conducts 
him to a grotesque art should be attracted towards mediaeval 
subjects. . . . Good elements hidden in horrid accom- 
paniments are the special theme of grotesque art ; and these 
mediaeval life and legends afford more copiously than could 
have been furnished before Christianity gave it new elements 
of good or since modern civilization has removed some few, at 
least, of the elements of destruction. . . . Browning has 
given many excellent specimens of grotesque art within proper 
boundaries and limits." — Walter Bagehot. 

11 With the doubtful exception of the ' Heretic's Tragedy,' 
1 Caliban upon Setebos ' is probably the finest piece of gro- 
tesque art in the language. . . . The ' Pietro ' of Abano 
is a fine piece of grotesque art, full of pungent humor, acute - 
ness, worldly wisdom, and clever phrasing and rhyming. 
The poem is one of the most characteristic examples 
of that ' Teutonic grotesque, which lies in the expression of 
deep ideas through fantastic form ' — a grotesque of noble and 
cultivated art — of which Mr. Browning is as great a master in 
poetry as Carlyle was in prose." — -John Addington Symonds. 

" A more valid accusation touches the many verbal per- 
versities, in which a poet has less right than another to in- 
dulge. The compound Latin and English of ' Don Giacinto,' 
notwithstanding the fun of the piece, still grows a burden to 
the flesh. Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts 
of metrical chaos, from which a writer's dignity and self- 
respect ought surely to be enough to preserve him. Again, 
there are passages marked by a coarse violence of expression 
that is nothing short of barbarous. ... It may well be, 
therefore, that the grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning 
unfortunately permits to himself may find misguided admirers, 
or, what is worse, even imitators. . . . The countrymen 



BROWNING 70I 

of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive terrible uncouth- 
nesses, blunt outrages to form and beauty, to fine creative 
genius." — J oh n Morley . 

"He loves what is odd, grotesque, morbid, quaint. Brown- 
ing's poetry is often harsh in manner, wanting in melody, 
and rough in rhyme and metre. He introduces uncouth and 
distracting rhymes." — G. IV. Cooke. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is past, 
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin ; 
And while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 
And feels about his spine small eft things course, 
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh— 

Thinketh he dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon ; 
Thinketh he made it, with the sun to match. 
But not the stars — the stars came otherwise : 
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that." 

— Catiban upon Setebos. 

" That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, 

Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, 
No gaudy ware like Gandolf s second line — 
Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need ! 
And then how I shall lie through centuries, 
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
And see God made and eaten all day long, 
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
Good strong, thick, stupefying incense-smoke ! 
For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 
Dying in state and by such slow degrees, 
I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, 
And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, 
And let the bedclothes for a mortcloth drop 
Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work." 
— The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxetfs Church, 



702 BROWNING 

" A viscid choler is observable 

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; 

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 

Than our school wots of: there's a spider here 

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, 

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; 

Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind, 

The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? 

His service payeth me a sublimate 

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 

Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn." — An Epistle. 

8. Earnestness— Soberness. — With Browning, life is 
a serious matter. There is little of the sportive element in his 
verse, little of the lighter forms of humor. 

" Most of Browning's poems might be described precisely 
as proposing for their immediate object truth, not pleasure ; 
though, when clearly apprehended, they seldom fail to give 
that higher kind of imaginative satisfaction which is one of 
the most enviable intellectual states, they give a very moder- 
ate amount of immediate sensitive pleasure." — R. H. Hutton. 

" l A Blot on the 'Scutcheon ' [on the stage] failed. This, 
of course, for there is little in it to relieve the human spirit — 
which cannot bear too much of earnestness and woe added to 
the mystery and wonder of our daily lives." — E. C. Stedman. 

" His voice sounds loudest and also clearest for the things 
which, as a race, we like best — the fascination of faith, the ac- 
ceptance of life, the respect for its mysteries, the endurance 
of its changes, the vitality of the will, the validity of charac- 
ter, the beauty of action, the seriousness, above all, of the 
great human passion." — Henry James. 

11 The lines [George Meredith's " Modern Love "] convey 
poetic sentiment rather than reasoned truth; while Mr. Brown- 
ing's close [to " The Ring and the Book "] would be no unfit 
epilogue to a scientific essay on history or a treatise on the 
errors of the human understanding and the inaccuracy of 
human opinions and judgment. This is the common note 



BROWNING 703 

of his highest work ; hard thought and reason illustrating 
themselves in dramatic circumstances, and the thought and 
reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate 
with far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy." 
— -John Morley. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their graves ! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves." 

— The Lost Leader. 
" Poor vaunt of life, indeed, 
Were man but formed to feed 
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast : 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men ; 
Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw-crammed 
beast ? 

" For thence,— a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks, — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me : 
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale." 

— Rabbi Ben Ezra. 



a 



Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows ! 
But not quite so sunk that moments, 
Sure though seldom, are denied us, 
When the spirit's true endowments 
Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
And apprise it if pursuing 
Or the right way or the wrong way, 
To its triumph or undoing. 



704 BROWNING 

" There are flashes struck from midnights, 
There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
Whereby piled-up honours perish, 
Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, 
While just this or that poor impulse, 
Which for once had play unstifled, 
Seems the sole work of a lifetime 
That away the rest have trifled." — Cristina. 

g. Cool, Grim Satire, Often Humorous. — As might 
be expected in a man of Browning's robust temperament, he 
deals but little in the milder forms of satire. There is little 
of the good-humored banter of Lamb, little of the sly thrust 
of Addison. Like Johnson, Burke, and Macaulay, Browning 
prefers a bludgeon to a stiletto, and strikes his victim square- 
ly in front or pierces him with arrows that leave a stinging 
wound. 

" This power [satire] is a favorite with Browning, who 
certainly possesses it abundant in measure and trenchant in 
quality. He has employed it with singular success ; but then 
to its employment he has not unfrequently sacrificed poetry. 
Each [monologue] is a legitimate, because a poetic, 
exercise of the tremendous power of satire possessed by its 
writer. And each gives proof of how disinterested he is in 
its employment ; since he forbears all appeal to the ill-nature 
of his readers by directing its lightnings against evil-doers 
remote from them, instead (like the older satirists) of aiming 
them at the sinners at their doors. . . . Nor should 
we omit to notice the deep-rooted convictions, alike moral 
and religious, from which Browning's severer satire springs ; 
or fail to acknowledge that if he sometimes disallows the 
claims of the beautiful, he is never unmindful of those of 
the truth." — Stopf or d Brooke. 

"As a humorist in poetry, Mr. Browning takes rank with 
our greatest. His humor, like most of his qualities, is pecul- 
iar to himself; though no doubt Carlyle had something of it. 



BROWNING 705 

It is of remarkably wide capacity, and ranges from the effer- 
vescence of pure fun and freak to that salt and briny laughter 
whose taste is bitterer than tears." — John Addington Symonds. 
" His humor is as genuine as that of Carlyle, and if his 
laugh have not the earthquake character with which Emerson 
has so happily labelled the shaggy merriment of that Jean 
Paul, Burns, yet it is always sincere and hearty, and there is a 
tone of meaning in it which always sets us to thinking." — 
Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Was it ' grammar ' wherein you would coach me — 

Was it ' clearness of words which convey thought' ? 

Ay, if words ever needed enswathe naught 

But ignorance, impudence, envy 

And malice — what word-swathe would then vie 

With yours for a clearness crystalline ? 

But had you to put in one small line 

Some thought big and bouncing — as noddle 

Of goose, born to cackle and waddle, 

You'd know, as you hissed, spat, and sputtered, 
Clear ' quack-quack ' is easily uttered." — Pacchiarotto. 

"See, as the prettiest graves will do in time, 
Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime ; 
Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods 
Have struggled through its binding osier rods ; 
Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry, 
Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by ; 
How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate, 
Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date ! " 

— Earth's Immortalities* 

"And this — why, he was red in vain, 
Or black — poor fellow that is blue ! 
What fancy was it, turned your brain ? 

Oh, women were the prize for you ! 
45 



?06 BROWNING 

Money gets women, cards and dice 
Get money, and ill-luck gets just 

The copper couch and one clear, nice, 
Cool squirt of water o'er your bust — 
The right thing to extinguish lust ! " 

— Apparent Failure. 

10. Fondness for Argumentation. — "One may find 
such a point in that [" Balaustion "] which critics know as 
the Euripidean sophistry, . . . and which means the 
tendency of his characters to argue for argument's sake, to 
conduct the pleadings of passion like pleadings at the bar, to 
say everything which can be said." — Sidney Colvin. 

" Generally speaking, where Lord Tennyson is meditative, 
Browning is argumentative, showing us his thought in process 
as it moves from point to point." — Mary Wilson. 

" Mr. Browning's argumentative verse divides itself into 
two classes ; those in which the speaker is defending a pre- 
conceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied, and those 
in which he is trying to form a judgment or accept one ; and 
the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. 
The first kind of argument or discussion is carried on — 
apparently — as much for victory as for truth ; and employs 
the weapons of satire or the tactics of special-pleading, as 
the case demands. The second is an often pathetic and 
always single-minded endeavor to get at the truth." — Mrs. 
Sutherland Orr. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Your business is not to catch men with show, 
With homage to the perishable clay, 
But lift them over it, ignore it all, 
Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh. 
Your business is to paint the souls of men — 
Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke . . . no, it's not . . . 
It's vapor done up like a new-born babe — 
(In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth) 



BROWNING 707 

It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul ! 
Give us no more of body than shows soul ! 
Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God, 
That sets us praising, — why not stop with him ? 
Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head 
With wonder at lines, colors, and what-not ? 
Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms ! " 

—Fra Lippo Lippi. 

" As it was better, youth 

Should strive, through acts uncouth, 

Toward making than repose on aught found made : 
So, better, age, exempt 
From strife, should know than tempt 

Further. Thou waitedst age : wait death nor be afraid ! 

" Enough now, if the Right 
And Good and Infinite 
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, 
With knowledge absolute, 
Subject to no dispute 
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone." 

— Rabbi Ben Ezra. 

11 What of a villa ? Though winter be over in March by rights, 
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the 

heights: 
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam 

and wheeze, 
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees. 

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, 
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle, 
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. 
Late August or early September the stunning cicala is shrill, 
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs 

on the hill. 
Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of the fever 

and chill." — Up at a Villa — Down in the City. 



708 browning 

II. Dramatic Power. — "Browning, when in a poem 
or drama he puts forth his peculiar power, when he writes 
with that motive which gives his work its singular value, 
is always dramatic. Whether he is so of purpose I shall 
not venture to say ; but the seeming of his poetry is that 
it takes shape from a necessity of his moral nature, not 
from a deliberate intellectual preference." — Richard Grant 
White. 

"It is customary to call Browning a dramatist, and with- 
out doubt he represents the dramatic element, such as it is, of 
the recent English school. He counts among his admirers 
many intellectual persons, some of whom pronounce him the 
greatest dramatic poet since Shakespeare, and one has said 
that ' it is to him that we must pay homage for whatever is 
good and great and profound in the second period of the 
poetic drama of England.' . . . Something of a dramatic 
character pertains to nearly all of Browning's lyrics. Like 
his wife, he has preferred to study human hearts rather than 
the forms of nature." — E. C. Stedman. 

"It is sometimes also suggested that there are dramatic 
poets and dramatic poets ; that, though Browning does not 
follow the modes of Shakespeare, he is in a certain sense, and 
in a very true sense, dramatic in spirit if not in form. But I 
do not think we see sufficient recognition of the fact that 
Browning works with quite a different intention to, and in 
quite a different manner from, Shakespeare; and must be 
judged by other standards, that is, by his own. . . . We 
see in Browning a drama of the interior, a tragedy or comedy 
of the soul. . . . The dramatic principles of Browning 
are not those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare makes his charac- 
ters live ; Browning makes his characters think." — -JoJui Ad- 
dingto?i Symonds. 

" To us he appears to have a wider range and greater free- 
dom of movement than any other of the younger English poets. 
In his dramas we find always a leading design and a conscious 



BROWNING 709 

subordination of all the parts to it. In each one of them, also, 
below the more apparent and exterior sources of interest we 
find an illustration of some general idea which bears only a 
philosophical relation to the particular characters, thoughts, 
and incidents, and without which the drama is still complete 
in itself, but which yet binds together and sustains the whole 
and conduces to that unity for which we esteem these works 
so highly. In another respect, Mr. Browning's dramatic 
power is rare. The characters of his women are finely dis- 
criminated. No two are alike, and yet the characteristic feat- 
ures of each are touched with the most delicate precision. By 
far the greater number of authors who have attempted female 
characters have given us mere automata. They think it enough 
if they make them subordinate to a generalized idea of human 
nature. Mr. Browning never forgets that women are women 
and not simply human beings; for there they occupy common 
ground with men. Many English dramas have been written 
within a few years, the authors of which have established their 
claim to the title of poet. We cannot but allow that we find 
in them fine thoughts finely expressed, passages of dignified 
and sustained eloquence, and as adequate a conception of char- 
acter as the reading of history and the study of models will 
furnish. But it is only in Browning that we find enough of 
freshness, vigor, grasp, and of that clear insight and concep- 
tion which enable the artist to construct characters from 
within and so to make them real things and not images, 
to warrant our granting the honor due to this dramatist." — 
Lowell. 

" The dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it 
difficult to construct his character from his works ; 
though a true dramatist, he is not like Shakespeare and Scott, 
whose characters seem never to have had an author." — Henry 
James. 

" One critic calls him a dramatist, and so he is ; for with 
the exception of Sir Henry Taylor's ' Philip Van Artevelde ' 



7IO BROWNING 

and Mr. Swinburne's ' Bothwell,' he has written the only 
works within this generation worthy of being called dramas." 
— G. B. Smith. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" ' Now, don't, sir ! Don't expose me ! Just this once ! 
This was the first and only time, I'll swear, — 
Look at me, — see, I kneel, — yes, by the soul 
Of her who hears — (your sainted mother, sir !) 
All, except this last accident, was truth — 
This little kind of slip ! — and even this, 
It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne 
(I took it for Catawba, you're so kind), 
Which put the folly in my head ! 

" * Get up ? ' 
You still inflict on me that terrible face ? 
You show no mercy ? — Not for her dear sake, 
The sainted spirit's, whose soft breath even now 
Blows on my cheek — (don't you feel something, sir ?) 
You'll tell ? 

Go tell, then ! Who the Devil cares 
What such a rowdy chooses to . . . 

Aie — aie — aie ! 
Please, sir ! your thumbs are through my windpipe, sir ! 
Ch— ch ! 

" Well, sir, I hope you've done it now! 
O Lord ! I little thought, sir, yesterday, 
When your departed mother spoke those words 
Of peace through me, and moved you, sir, so much, 
You gave me — (very kind it was of you) 
These shirt-studs — (better take them back again, 
Please, sir) — yes, little did I think so soon 
A trifle of trick, all through a glass too much 
Of his own champagne, would change my best of friends 
Into an angry gentleman ! " — Mr. Sludge, The Medium. 



BROWNING 711 

Guendolen. — " She's dead 

Let me unlock her arms ! " 

Tresham. — " She threw them thus 

About my neck and blessed me, and then died. 
You'll let them stay now, Guendolen ! " 

Austin. — " Leave her 

And look to him ! What ails you, Thorold ? " 

Guendolen. — " White 

As she — and whiter ! Austin — quick — this side ! " 

Austin. — " A froth is oozing thro' his clenched teeth — 
Both lips, where they're not bitten thro', are black ! 
Speak, dearest Thorold ! " 

Tresham. — " Something does weigh down 

My neck besides her weight ; thanks ; I should fall 
But for you, Austin, I believe ! — there, there — 
'Twill pass away soon ! — Ah — I had forgotten — 
I am dying." 

Guendolen. — " Thorold — Thorold — why was this ? " 

Tresham. — " I said, just as I drank the poison off, 
The earth would be no longer earth to me, 
The life out of all life was gone from me ! 
There are blind ways provided, the foredone, 
Heart-weary player in this pageant world 
Drops out by letting the main masque defile 
By the conspicuous portal : — I am through — 
Just through ! — " — A Blot on the 'Scutcheon. 

" You, now, so kind here, all you Florentines, 

What is it in your eyes . . . those lips, those brows . . 

Nobody spoke it . . . yet I know it well ! — 

Come now — this battle saves you, all's at end, 

Your use of me is o'er, for good, for evil — 

Come now, what's done against me, while I speak, 

In Florence ? Come ! I feel it in my blood, 

My eyes, my hair, a voice is in my ear 

That spite of all this smiling and kind speech 

You are betraying me ! What is it you do ? 

Have it your way, and think my use is over ; 

That you are saved and may throw off the mask — 

Have it my way, and think more work remains 



712 BROWNING 

Which I could do — so show you fear me not, 

Or prudent be, or generous, as you choose, 

But tell me — tell me what I refused to know 

At noon, lest heart should fail me ! Well ? That letter ? 

My fate is known at Florence ! What is it ? " — Luria. 

12. Mastery of Rhyme. — " There is no such extrava- 
gant and out-of-the-way word in the language that Browning 
will not find you a rhyme for, if not in one word, then in 
two, three, or four ; and if not in one language then in 
another. ' ' — Roden Noel. 

" In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is per- 
haps the greatest master of our language ; in single and double, 
in simple and grotesque alike, he succeeds in fitting rhyme to 
rhyme with a perfection which I have never found in any other 
poet of any age." — John Addington Symonds. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" But I think I gave you as good ! 

' That foreign fellow, — who can know 
How she pays, in a tuneful mood, 
For his tuning her that piano ? ' 

" Could you say so, and never say 

' Suppose we join hands and fortunes, 
And I fetch her from over the way, 

Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ?' 

" But you meet the Prince at the Board, 
I'm queen myself at bals-pare, 
I've married a rich old lord, 

And you're dubbed knight and an R.A." 

— Youth and Art. 

" But where I begin my own narration 
Is a little after I took my station 
To breathe the fresh air from the balcony, 
And, having in those days a falcon eye, 



BROWNING 713 

To follow the hunt thro' the open country, 

From where the bushes thinlier crested 

The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree : — 

When, in a moment, my ear was arrested 

By — was it singing, or was it saying, 

Or a strange musical instrument playing 

In the chamber ? — and to be certain 

I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain." 

— The Flight of the Duchess. 

" But the most turned in yet more abruptly 
From a certain squalid knot of alleys, 
Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, 
Which now the little chapel rallies 
And leads into day again — its priestliness 
Lending itself to hide their beastliness 
So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), 
And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on 
Those neophytes too much in lack of it, 
That, where you cross the common as I did, 
And meet the party thus presided, 
i Mount Zion ' with Love-lane at the back of it, 
They front you as little disconcerted 
As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, 
And her wicked people made to mind him, 
Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him." 
— Christmas -Eve and Easter-Day. 



WHITTIER, 1807-1892 

Biographical Outline. — John Greenleaf Whittier, born 
December 17, 1807, in the East Parish of Haverhill, Mass.; 
both parents strict Quakers; father a farmer of supposed Hu- 
guenot descent, living far from any neighbor and far from any 
school ; Whittier works as a boy on his father's farm, where, 
through insufficient clothing and other unwise methods of 
"toughening" then in vogue among New England farmers, 
he sows the seeds of lifelong ill health ; until his nineteenth 
year his only education is obtained at a district school, which 
is open but a small part of each year ; his first literary inspi- 
ration comes from Burns, through the medium of a travelling 
Scotch pedler, and from Scott ; as a school-boy he used to 
cover his slate with original rhymes instead of sums ; during 
his early youth he writes much verse, but his father discour- 
ages the son's " foolish waste of time over his day-dreams ; " 
his first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," was con- 
tributed anonymously, in 1826, to the Free Press, then re- 
cently established in Newburyport by William Lloyd Garri- 
son ; the merit of the poem is recognized by Garrison, who 
discovers its authorship, and, without invitation, visits Whittier 
on his father's farm ; he finds the young poet hoeing corn and 
clad so poorly and meagrely that he at first declines to be pre- 
sented to the young city editor, but afterward yields to the 
importunities of his sister Elizabeth ; Garrison declares that 
Whittier " bids fair to become another Bernard Barton," and 
urges him to obtain a better education ; Whittier's father is not 
pleased with the idea, as he is unable to aid his son, but the 
young poet learns from one of his father's farm -laborers the art 
of making ladies' slippers, and thus soon earns money enough to 

714 



WHITTIER 715 

pay for his board and tuition for six months at the then newly 
established academy at Haverhill; in May, 1827, soon after 
entering this school, he writes, by invitation, an ode to be 
sung at the dedication of the new academy building ; from 
1826 to 1830 he contributes to the Essex Gazette several 
poems, some of which are promptly plagiarized by city jour- 
nals ; two terms of six months each at the Haverhill Academy 
constitute Whittier's " higher education ; " in the winter of 
1827-28 he has his first and only experience as a teacher, 
taking charge of a district school in West Amesbury, near 
Merrimac. 

Late in 1828 Whittier is offered, through Garrison, the 
editorship of the Philanthropist, a Boston journal — the first 
temperance paper ever published — and he begins his editorial 
work there January 1, 1829 ; after nine months in the Boston 
printing-office he is recalled to the home-farm by his father's 
illness, and he remains there till his father's death in January, 
1830, meantime contributing much prose and verse to various 
periodicals ; in 1832, on the nomination of Geo. D. Prentice, 
Whittier is made editor of the New Engla?id Review, pub- 
lished at Hartford ; he accepts the position, but ill health 
soon compels him to resign it and to return to the farm-home; 
between 1829 and 1832 he writes over one hundred poems; 
in the spring of 1833, while still carrying on the farm, he 
writes and publishes at his own expense his great prose pam- 
phlet " Justice and Expediency " — a step that marks specifi- 
cally Whittier's adoption of Abolition tenets; this pamphlet 
was reprinted and scattered broadcast by other Abolitionists, 
and became decidedly the most influential paper of that decade 
for the advancement of the anti-slavery cause ; most of the 
poems now published in Whittier's complete works under the 
title " Voices of Freedom " were written between 1833 and 
1847, and were contributed to various journals ; he is a dele- 
gate to the first national anti-slavery convention, in Decem- 
ber, 1833, a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 



716 WHITTIER 

1834-35, and refuses a re-election for 1835-36 ; late in 1835 
he narrowly escapes being mobbed for his anti-slavery views 
at Concord, N. H. 

In the spring of 1836 the Haverhill farm is sold, and the 
poet buys a cottage at Amesbury, Mass., which remains his 
home during the rest of his life; in 1840, and for several 
years at that period, Whittier was practically the political 
leader of his congressional district, and was able to dictate to 
Caleb Cushing the conditions (relating to Cushing's attitude 
toward slavery) on which he might be re-elected to Congress ; 
in 1836 he publishes " Mogg Megone " in pamphlet form at 
Boston — a poem that he afterward endeavored vainly to sup- 
press ; in 1837 he is in New York City, acting as one of the 
secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society ; in March, 
1838, he becomes the responsible editor of the Pe?insyivania 
Freeman, before edited by Benjamin Lundy under the name 
of the National Enquirer, and he holds this relation till 1840, 
though he is frequently compelled by ill health to return to 
Amesbury, sending thence by mail his contributions to the 
Freeman ; when, in 1841, the pro-slavery mob burned Penn- 
sylvania Hall, the famous building in which was the office of 
the Freeman, he saved his private papers at great personal 
risk, and the next day calmly issued the Freeman from another 
office ; during an absence of Whittier at Amesbury in Novem- 
ber, 1838, the agent of the Anti -Slavery Society of Pennsyl- 
vania issued a volume of his poems amounting to one hundred 
and fifty pages ; of the fifty poems in this collection, none were 
published in the " Legends of New England," and only eleven 
of them are to be found in the complete edition of Whittier's 
works published fifty years afterward ; the title-page of this 
first authorized collection of Whittier's poems, which he had 
collected during the summer of 1838, bears the text from 
Ecclesiastes iv. 1 : "So I returned and considered all the 
oppressions that are done under the sun ; and, behold, the 
tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter ; 



WHITTIER 717 

and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they 
had no comforter; " in July, 1839, increasing ill health com- 
pels him to give up his journalistic duties, and he makes a 
tour of Western Pennsylvania, seeking health and working for 
the an ti -slavery cause wherever he goes ; later he arranges for 
petitions from every part of his congressional district, calling 
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and 
the restriction of the slave-trade ; these petitions are denied 
under a new congressional rule, whose author Whittier gives a 
terrible poetic castigation in the Freeman in January, 1839; 
in June, 1839, he is present at a national anti-slavery conven- 
tion in Albany, and afterward visits Saratoga at the height of 
the season as "a laughing philosopher; " thence by way of 
Newport and New York to Amesbury, where he remains till 
October, 1839, when he is again at his desk in Philadelphia. 
In February, 1840, his physician declares that Whittier is 
affected with a serious heart trouble and that he must give up 
his editorial work ; he accordingly publishes his valedictory, 
February 20, 1840, and returns to Amesbury ; his continued ill 
health compels him to give up an intended visit to the World's 
Anti-Slavery Convention in London during the summer of 
1840; he remains at Amesbury till April, 1841, when he 
goes to New York, meets Joseph Sturges, the English philan- 
thropist, then visiting this country, and, with Sturges, visits 
Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington ; while 
in Baltimore they visit several slave-pens ; Whittier entertains 
Sturges at x\mesbury during the summer of 1841, and on his 
departure for England in August, Sturges leaves with Lewis 
Tappan $1,000, to be used by Whittier in travelling or in 
any other way he may choose; in October, 1842, Whittier 
receives from Lowell, then doing his first journalistic work as 
editor of a new Boston magazine called the Pioneer, a request 
for a poem, and sends him the lines entitled "Toa Friend 
on his Return from Europe;" Whittier's poem "Massa- 
chusetts to Virginia," first published in the Liberator, Janu- 



71 8 WHITTIER 

ary 27, 1843, without his name, was inspired by the trial of 
a fugitive slave in Boston, and was at once recognized as 
Whittier's work; in May, 1843, Ticknor & Fields issue a 
volume of his poems entitled " Lays of My Home and Other 
Poems" — the first of his published works from which Whit- 
tier realized any financial return, as all of his poems previ- 
ously published had been sold for the benefit of " the cause; " 
all the twenty-three poems in this volume have been retained 
in the poet's complete works ; the first four of his " Songs of 
Labor " were contributed to the Democratic Review in 1845 
and 1846; the rest appeared in the National Era under 
Whittier's editorship; in March, 1844, at the request of 
Lowell, he wrote "Texas" and "The Voice of New Eng- 
land." 

For several weeks during 1844 Whittier resides in 
Boston, editing the Middlesex Sentinel ; for about two years 
at this period he was also virtually editor of the Essex 
(Amesbury) Transcript, though his name did not appear as 
editor; he wrote "in a beautiful flowing hand, with seldom 
an emendation or any interlining;" his series of papers 
entitled " The Stranger in Lowell" were first printed in the 
Transcript and afterward appeared in book form ; during the 
year 1845 he aids in the campaign of the Free Soil Party 
with vigorous satirical verse, much of it written anonymously ; 
when the National Era is established at Washington as the 
leading anti-slavery organ, in 1847, Whittier becomes assist- 
ant or corresponding' editor, and continues to hold this posi- 
tion till i860 ; his relation to the paper enables him to 
retain his residence at Amesbury, where the ministrations of 
his mother and sister contribute much to the preservation of 
his health ; he writes " Randolph of Roanoke" in January, 
1847, and "The Pine Tree" in September following; from 
1847 to 1859 the Era contained over eighty of Whittier's 
poems, including " Barclay of Ury," "The Angels of Buena 
Vista," "Ichabod," "Maud Muller," and "The Witch's 



WHITTIER 719 

Daughter," but the bulk of his work during these years 
was done in prose ; his most notable prose work of this period 
was " Margaret Smith's Journal," really an historical novel, 
first published serially in the Era and afterward reprinted in 
book form by Ticknor & Fields, in 1849; Whittier fre- 
quently filled from eight to ten pages of a single issue of the 
Era with his own prose contributions; in 1849 his poems 
are issued in a fine illustrated octavo volume, which passes 
rapidly through three editions, and brings to Whittier a con- 
siderable financial return ; in 1850 another volume appears 
containing the " Songs of Labor " and twenty-one mis- 
cellaneous poems ; in 1850 Whittier also publishes his prose 
volume entitled "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches;" 
during 1850 also, against Sumner's will, Whittier persuades 
him to accept the Free Soil nomination for United States 
Senator — a nomination that results in an election, and so is 
the beginning of Sumner's career as a statesman ; during the 
summer of 1850 Whittier entertains Lowell and Bayard 
Taylor at Amesbury ; he is severely ill early in 185 1 ; he 
contributes "Moloch in State Street" to the Era in May, 
1852 ; " The Panorama," written in 1855, was first published 
in 1856 in a small volume containing also the poems entitled 
"A Memory," "Burns," "Tauler," " The Barefoot Boy," 
and " The Kansas Emigrants; " during 1856 he first takes a 
public stand in favor of woman suffrage, and supports Fre- 
mont, writing for the campaign the poems entitled " What of 
the Day ? " " The Pass of the Sierra," " To Pennsylvania," 
" A Song for the Time," and that beginning "Beneath thy 
Skies, November;" "The Mayflower" was also written in 
1856; in 1857 Whittier loses his mother, to whom he had 
been intensely devoted, and Ticknor & Fields publish, at his 
request, the complete "blue and gold " edition of his poems; 
he urges the omission of " Mogg Megone " from this edition, 
but Fields insists on retaining it; Whittier, however, insists 
on omitting the poems entitled "The Response," " Stanzas 



720 WHITTIER 

for the Times, 1844," " Address at the Opening of Penn- 
sylvania Hall," and "The Album; " the second and third 
of this list of poems were retained in the edition of 1888. 

In 1857 Whittier aids in organizing the Atlantic Monthly , 
and at the editorial rooms in Boston he frequently meets 
Emerson, Mrs. Stowe, Lowell, Theodore Parker, Holmes, 
Prescott, Motley, Norton, and other eminent contributors, 
although, because of his delicate health, he is seldom present 
at any of the famous monthly dinners given by the Atlantic ; 
among his early poems in the Atlantic are the one on the 
laying of the first ocean cable, "The Pipes at Lucknow," 
and " Skipper Ireson's Ride; " in i860 he publishes a volume 
entitled "Home Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics," opening with 
" The Witch's Daughter," afterward called " Mabel Martin," 
and containing also "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewell," 
"The Preacher," "ToG.B.C," "Brown of Ossawattomie," 
"From Perugia," "The Peace of Europe," and "The 
Prisoners of Naples;" in January, 1861, he voices his pro- 
test against war in the poem "A Word for the Hour; " in 
February, 1862, he publishes in the Atlantic his " Negro 
Boat Song at Port Royal; " during the early years of the 
war he writes also "Thy Will be Done," "The Battle 
Autumn of 1862," " Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott," and 
" The Watchers ; " in 1863 he publishes a volume entitled 
"In War Time and Other Poems," including those just 
mentioned and " Amy Wentworth," "Mountain Pictures," 
"The Laurels," and " Barbara Frietchie ; " " Barbara Friet- 
chie " first appears in the Atlantic in September, 1863, and 
Whittier receives for the manuscript $150; during the same 
month he commends the famous "emancipation proclama- 
tion" of Fremont ; on receiving, in January, 1864, $340 as 
his first royalties on the volume " In War Time," he writes, 
" It makes me rich as Croesus;" his sister Elizabeth dies 
September 3, 1864, and he writes, " The great motive of life 
seems lost ; ' ' three weeks later he sends to the Atlantic 



W1IITTIER 721 

"The Vanishers;" in 1864 he publishes "The Mantle of 
St. John de Matha " and in 1865 " The Changeling," both 
in the Atlantic ; on hearing of the passage of the constitu- 
tional amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, in 
February, 1865, he sends to the hidependent " Lans Deo" 

He begins " Snow Bound" — really a memorial tribute to 
his mother and sister — in the summer of 1865, and writes to 
Fields, " If I ever finish, I hope and trust it will be good ; " 
he sends it to Fields, October 3, 1865, but Fields returns it 
with suggestions for several changes, most of which Whittier 
adopts ; the poem is published early in 1866, and Whittier's 
share of the profits of the first issue are $10, 00c; between 
1832 and 1865, besides an enormous amount of prose, he had 
written nearly three hundred poems, one-third of them relat- 
ing directly or indirectly to slavery ; in July, 1866, he writes 
to a friend: "If my health allowed me to write, I could 
make money easily now, as my anti-slavery reputation does 
not injure me in the least at the present time. For twenty 
years I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and maga- 
zine editors, but I was enabled by rigid economy to live in 
spite of them and to see the end of the infernal institution 
that proscribed me; thank God for it!" he begins the 
final arrangement of " The Tent on the Beach " in the sum- 
mer of 1866, but ill health compels him to lay it aside; in 
September, 1866, he sends to Mrs. Fields the little poem 
" Our Master ; " during the same year appears a two-volume 
edition of his prose works ; he completes " The Tent on the 
Beach " in December, and it appears in February, 1867, and 
sells, at first, at the rate of one thousand copies a day ; about 
this time Whittier describes himself as " a bundle of nerves 
for pain to experiment on ; " he writes " The Palatine " in 
August, 1867, and meets Dickens in Boston during the fol- 
lowing December, though ill health prevents him from at- 
tending the readings of the novelist ; he is very ill during the 
winter of 1867-68. 
46 



722 WHITTIER 

An illustrated edition of Whittier's poems is published in 
1868 under the title " Among the Hills and Other Poems ; " 
" The Clear Vision " appears in the Atlantic in April, 1868 ; 
the poem entitled "Among the Hills" first appeared in the 
Atlantic in June, 1868, under the title of "The Wife: An Idyll 
of Bearchamp Water," and was but half as long as in its pres- 
ent form; during 1869 and 1870 Whittier writes "Howard 
at Atlanta," "Marguerite," "The Pageant," and "In School 
Days ;" during middle and later life he could not write or read 
for half an hour continuously without suffering a severe head- 
ache — a fact that accounts for much of Whittier's seeming 
diffidence on public occasions ; he was also color-blind and 
in later life somewhat deaf; in 187 1 he publishes a volume 
entitled "Miriam and Other Poems;" in 1871 he edits 
"John Woolman's Journal" and a collection of juvenile 
poems called " Child Life in Song," and translates into Eng- 
lish verse the Danish story of " Volmer and Elsie; " in 1872 
he publishes " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim " in a volume with 
" Volmer and Elsie " and a dozen other poems ; in August of 
this year he receives a severe shock when his house is struck 
by lightning ; during 1872 and 1873 he labors earnestly to 
secure the rescinding of the legislative enactment censuring 
Sumner for favoring the return of the Confederate flags ; the 
effort fails at first, but Whittier finally succeeds, and the act 
is rescinded ; late in 1873 he writes the ode now known as 
"A Christmas Carmen," and sends it anonymously to Gil- 
more, the bandmaster of the great Peace Jubilee, who re- 
jects the ode; in 1874 Whittier writes but throws aside his 
poem entitled "A Sea Dream," saying that it is "a poem 
that the world can do without;" in its place he sends to 
the Atlantic his "Golden Wedding of Longwood ; " dur- 
ing 1874 he also adds eighty lines to "The Witch's Daugh- 
ter," and rechristens it " Mabel Martin ; " early in 1875 he 
entertains at Amesbury Garrison, Elizur Wright, and Samuel 
Sewell, and speaks of the quartette as "four gray old abo- 



WHITTIER 723 

litionists, dating back to 1832;" he sends "Lexington, 
1775/' to the Atlantic in March, 1875 ; during this year he 
also publishes the collection of poems called " Hazel Blos- 
soms," and collaborates with Lucy Larcom in editing " Songs 
of Three Centuries; " early in 1876, after Bryant, Lowell, and 
Holmes had declined to write the hymn for the opening of 
the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Whittier yields to 
importunities of his intimate friend, Bayard Taylor, and 
writes the hymn for that occasion ; his niece Lizzie, who had 
been the poet's housekeeper since the death of his sister, was 
married in April, 1876, and thereafter Whittier made his 
home during a large part of each year with three cousins — 
the Misses Johnson and Miss Woodman — at Danvers, Mass., 
in a house to which he gave the name of " Oak Knoll ; " he 
really spent but little time at Amesbury during his later years, 
but he retained his citizenship and his property there; during 
the summer of 1876, by special appointment, Whittier meets 
Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, who was a warm admirer of 
the Quaker poet ; during his later years Whittier's favorite 
summer residence is at the Bearchamp House, at West Ossipee, 
N. H., where he writes "Among the Hills," " Sunset on the 
Bearchamp," "Seeking a Waterfowl," and "The Voyage 
of the Jettie ; " he publishes "The Witch of Wenham " in 
the Atlantic in April, 1876; in 1877, in response to tributes 
to Whittier on his seventieth birthday, written for the Liter- 
ary World by a score of the most eminent American writers, 
he writes the sonnet beginning " Beside the milestone, where 
the level sun." 

Whittier remained an optimist till the end, and wrote to a 
friend in 1881, "The Lord reigns; our old planet is wheel- 
ing slowly into fuller light. I despair of nothing good." 
The tributes to his fame and genius during his later years 
from all classes of people were both numerous and significant ; 
during 1883 he publishes the volume called " The Bay of 
Seven Islands and Other Poems," and writes for the Atlajitic 



724 WHITTIER 

the poem " At Last ; " in 1885, at Tennyson's request, Whit- 
tier writes the inscription for General Gordon's cenotaph in 
Westminster; in 1886 he publishes a volume entitled " Saint 
Gregory's Quest and Other Poems" — sixteen poems, nearly 
all written after his seventy-fifth year; during his last three 
years he remains much at Amesbury, saying, " I seem nearer 
to my mother and sister here ; " during 1888 he revises the 
proofs of his poems and prose works for the complete seven- 
volume " Riverside " edition of his works, saying, " I have a 
strong desire to drown some of them [the poems] like so 
many kittens ; " during 1890 he publishes for private circu- 
lation among his friends the little volume of his earliest verses 
entitled " At Sundown," which appeared publicly two years 
later; in 1891 he writes to Holmes concerning death, " I 
await the call with a calm trust in the eternal goodness;" 
during 1891 he writes his lines on Lowell and the poems 
" The Birthday Wreath " and " Between the Gates ; " during 
the summer of 1892 he revises the proofs of his volume "At 
Sundown ; " he suffers a paralytic shock on September 3, 1892, 
and dies peacefully at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 
1892, while a relative recites his poem "At Last." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON WHITTIER. 

Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
flin & Co., 95-133. 

Underwood, F. H., " Biography of Whittier." Boston, 1884, Osgood, 
v. index. 

Kennedy, W. S. , "John G. Whittier." New York, 1892, Funk & 
Wagnalls, v. index. 

Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
2 : 172-187. 

Whipple, E. P., " Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 
I : 68-71. 

Whipple, E. P., " American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 

73-75- 
Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 294-296. 



WHITTIER 725 

Pickard, S. L., " Life and Letters of Whittier. " Boston, 1894, Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co., 2 volumes, v index. 

Wendell, B., " Stelligeri." New York, 1893, Scribner, 146-202. 

Lowell, J. R., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin 
& Co., 134, 135, and 450. 

Mitford, Miss M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 
Harper, 1851, 334-340- 

Griswold, R. W., "The Poets of America." New York, 1872, James 
Miller, 389-406. 

May, S. J., "Some Recollections." Boston, 1869, Fields, 258-267. 

Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes," etc. New York, 1885, Crowell, 

3I9-323- 
Bungay, G. W., "Off-hand Takings." New York, 1834,, Dewitt, 

v. index. 
Gilder, J. L. and J. B., "Authors at Home." New York, 1888, Cas- 

sell, 343-355- 
Claflin, M. B., " Personal Recollections of Whittier." New York, 

1893, Crowell, v. index. 
Chautauquan, 16 : 299-301 (J. V. Cheney). 

Century, 23 : 363-368 (E. S. Phelps) ; 8 : 38-50 (E. C. Stedman). 
Cosmopolitan, 16 : 303-306 (C. F. Bates). 
McClures Magazine, 2: 125-129 (C. F. Bates); 7: 114-121 (E. S. 

Phelps). 
New England Magazine, 7 : 275-293 (W. S. Kennedy). 
New World, 2 : 88-103 (J- W. Chadwick). 
Good Words, 28: 29-34 (F. H. Underwood). 
Atlantic Monthly, 70 : 642-648 (G. E. Woodberry) 
Critic, 18: 221, 222 (O. W. Holmes); 81 : 307, 308 (J. H. Morse). 
Harper's Magazine, 86:338-357 (A. Fields); 68: 177-188 (H. P. 

Spofford). 
Arena, 15 : 376-384 (M. B. Claflin) ; 10: 153-168 (W. H. Savage). 
International Review, 3: 405-413 (B. Taylor). 
Scribner' 's Monthly, 18: 569-583 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Appleton's Journal, 5 : 431-434 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Lakeside Monthly, 5 : 365-367 (R. Collyer). 
Independent, 49 : 1258, 1259 (S. L. Pickard). 
Dial (Chicago), 9: 193-196 (M. B. Anderson). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Idyllic Flavor — Homely Beauty. — "Of our lead- 
ing poets, Whittier was almost the only one who learned Nat- 



726 WHITTIER 

ure by working with her at all seasons, under the sky and in 
the wood and field. . . . While chanting in behalf of 
every patriotic or human effort of his time, he has been the 
truest singer of our homestead or wayside life, and has rendered 
all the legends of his region into familiar verse. ... As 
a bucolic poet of his own section, rendering its pastoral life 
and aspect, Whittier surpasses all rivals. . . . To read 
his verse was to recall the scent of the clover and apple-bloom, 
to hear again the creak of the well-pole, the rattle of bars in the 
lane — the sights and freshness of youth passing for a moment, 
a vision of peace over their battle-field." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Whittier, on the whole, has lived nearer the homely 
heart and life of his northern countrymen than any other 
American poet save Longfellow. . . . Unvexed by 
literary envy and oblivious to mere fame, he became the 
laureate of the ocean beach, the inland lake, the little wood 
flower, and the divine sky." — C. F. Richardson. 

"It is not without perfect justice that ' Snow-Bound ' takes 
rank with ' The Cotter's Saturday Night' and 'The Deserted 
Village; ' it belongs in this group as a faithful picture of hum- 
ble life. . . . All his affection for the soil on which he 
was born went into it ; and no one ever felt more deeply that 
attachment to the region of his birth which is the great spring 
of patriotism. . . . It is the New England home entire, 
with its characteristic scenes, its incidents of household life, 
its Christian virtues." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" Like Burns and Cowper, Whittier is distinctively a rustic 
poet. . . . His idyllic poetry savors of the soil and is full 
of local allusions. . . . There are trees and trees at Oak 
Knoll. . . . The house is of wood. ... In front 
a luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves. On the front porch 
a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the green silence with 
gushes of melody: and near at hand, in his study in the wing 
of the building, siis one with a singing pen and listens to their 
song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by 



WHITTIER 727 

his window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes — 
this sweet-souled magician — and craftily imprisons between 
the covers of his books echoes of bird and tree music, bits of 
blue sky, glimpses of green landscape, winding rivers, and 
idyls of the snow — all suffused and interfused with a glowing 
atmosphere of human and divine love." — W. S. Kennedy. 

" Throughout the work of his sixty-seven years one feels 
with growing admiration a constant simplicity of feeling and 
of phrase, as pure as the country air he loved to breathe." 
— Barrett Weiidell. 

" So far as flavor of the soil went, he was far beyond Long- 
fellow or Holmes or Lowell." — T. W. Higginson. 

" The poet himself calls the scenes in ' Snow-Bound' Flem- 
ish pictures ; and it is true they have much of the homely 
fidelity of Teniers, but they are far more than literal represen- 
tations. The scenes glow with ideal beauty — all the more for 
their bucolic tone. The works and ways of the honest people 
are almost photographically revealed." — F. H. Underwood. 

" The birds which carolled over his head, the flowers 
which grew under his feet, were as poetic as those to which 
the Scottish ploughman had given perennial interest. Burns 
taught him to detect the beautiful in the common." — E. P. 
Whipple. 

" This exquisite poem[" Snow-Bound"] has no prototype in 
English literature, unless Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Night " 
be one, and it will be long, I fear, before it has a companion- 
piece. It can be fully appreciated only by those who are New 
England born and on whose heads the snows of fifty or sixty 
winters have fallen." — R. H. Stoddard. 

"There is no custom of the country, common and simple 
as it may be, sugar-camp and sleigh-ride, husking, apple-par- 
ing, and the telling of the bees, that he does not fling his 
charm about it." — Harriet Prescott Spofford. 



728 WII1TTIER 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" It was the pleasant harvest-time, 
When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
And garrets bend beneath their load, 

" And the old swallow-haunted barns — 
Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
Through which the moted sunlight streams, 

" And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
And the loose hay-mow's scented locks — 

11 Are filled with summer's ripened stores, 
Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
From their low scaffolds to their eaves." 

— The Witch's Daughter. 

" We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
What sunny hillsides, autumn-brown, 
She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
And heard the wild geese calling loud 
Beneath the gray November cloud." — Snow- Bound. 



a 



Here is the place ; right over the hill 

Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 

*' There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
And the poplars tall ; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

" There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun ; 
And down by the brink 
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, 
Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink." 

— Telling the Bees. 



WHITTIER 729 

2. Moral Energy — Vehemence — Intensity. — 

At first, the reader is inclined to think vehemence the most 
essential quality of Whittier's style ; but a more careful reflec- 
tion will convince him that the critics are right in maintain- 
ing that his idyls will live long after his trumpet-blasts against 
slavery have been forgotten. 

"What is the great central element in our poet's character, 
if it is not that deep, never-smouldering moral fervor, that 
unquenchable love of freedom, that 

' Hate of tyranny, intense 
And hearty in its vehemence,' 

which, mixed with the beauty and melody of his soul, gives to 
his pages a delicate glow as of gold-hot iron ; which crowned 
him the laureate of freedom in his day, and imparts to his 
utterances the manly ring of the prose of Milton and Hugo 
and the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and Whitman — all poets 
of freedom like himself ? . He is occasionally nerved 

to almost superhuman effort ; it is the battle-axe of Richard 
thundering at the gates of Front de Bceuf. . . . Never 
ceasing to express his high-born soul in burning invective 
and scathing satire against the oppressor. . . . Another 
powerful group of these anti-slavery poems is constituted by the 
scornful mock-congratulatory productions ; such as the ' Hun- 
ters of Men,' 'Clerical Oppressors,' 'The Yankee Girl,' 'A 
Sabbath Scene,' 'Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper 
wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower 
One,' and 'The Pastoral Letter.' The sentences in these 
stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot." — W. S. Kennedy. 
" Whittier had always lived in a region of moral ideas, and 
this anti -slavery inspiration inflamed his moral ideas into 
moral passion and moral wrath. If Garrison may be con- 
sidered the prophet of anti-slavery and Phillips its orator 
and Mrs. Stowe its novelist and Sumner its statesman, there 
can be no doubt that Whittier was its poet. Quaker as he 



730 WHITTIER 

was, his martial lyrics had something of the energy of the 
primitive bard urging on hosts to battle. Every word was a 
blow. . . . He roused, condensed, and elevated the 
public sentiment against slavery. The poetry was as genuine 
as the wrath was terrific, and many a political time-server who 
was proof against Garrison's hottest denunciations and Phillips's 
most stinging invectives, quailed before Whittier's smiting 
rhymes. . . . He seems, in some of his lyrics, to pour 
out his blood with his lines. There is a rush of passion in his 
verse which sweeps everything along with it. The 

strong qualities of his mind, acting at the suggestion of con- 
science, produce a kind of military morality which uses all 
the deadly arms of verbal warfare. . . . His invective is 
merciless and undistinguishing ; he almost screams with rage 
and indignation." — E. P. Whipple. 
" And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes ; 

Not his best, though ; for those are struck off at white heats 
When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, 
And could ne'er be repeated again any more 
Than they could have been carefully plotted before." 

— James Russell Lowell. 
" That one [poem] entitled simply * Stanzas,' has an almost 
terrible force. . . . Evidently written in a white heat, 
the language is at once terse and vehement, and the sound of 
the lines is like the clashing of swords. The thoughts and 
emotions are sublime, as happens only in the most exalted state 
of the creative soul. Such a poem could never have been com- 
posed. It is as difficult to quote from it as to give a segment 
of a moving wave of lava. . . . What a pleasure — and 
what a surprise — it would be to see such vigorous strokes in a 
magazine to-day. . . . It [" Ichabod "] contains more 
storages of electric energy than any we remember in our 
time. . . . The reply of Whittier [" The Pastoral Letter"] 
is filled with grim sarcasm and indignant invective. 
The lines hit like rapier thrusts." — F. H. Underwood. 



WHITTIER 731 

" Peaceful thy message, yet for struggling right — 
When slavery's gauntlet in our face was flung — 
While timid weaklings watched the dubious fight 
No herald's challenge more defiant rung." 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

" Nothing can exceed, nothing can equal, the wild power 
of some of these songs [" Voices of Freedom "], now soaring 
in scorn, now writhing in angry shame, rising with indignant 
outcry, burning in fiery eloquence ; and all moving to the 
magic of music and the pathos of their undercurrent of sor- 
row." — Harriet Prescott Spofford. 

" Whittier is a poet militant, a crusader, whose moral 
weapons — since he must disown the carnal — were keen of edge 
and seldom in their scabbards. . . . At an age when 
bardlings are making sonnets to a mistress's eyebrow, he was 
facing mobs at Plymouth, Boston, Philadelphia. 
The poet's deep-voiced scorn rendered his anti-slavery verse 
a very different thing from Longfellow's, and made the hearer 
sure of his 'effectual calling.' " — E.C. Sted?na?i. 

" His anti-slavery poems were earnest and indignant ; ear- 
nest in their maintenance of the freedom of all men without 
regard to color, and indignant at the persecutions of those 
who sought to restore the rights which had been wrested from 
them. . . . Holding the opinions that he did, and hav- 
ing the temperament that he had, Mr. Whittier could no more 
have stifled his fiery denunciations of slavery than the old 
Hebrew seers could have stifled their dark and fateful prophe- 
cies." — R. H. Stoddard. 

" Some of his most indignant and sharpest invective was 
directed against Pope Pius IX., who stood to Whittier as the 
very type of that Christian obstructiveness to the work of 
Christ which in a lesser degree he had seen in his own coun- 
try, and had seen always only to express the heart-felt scorn 
which descended to him with his Quaker birthright." — 
G. E. Woodberry. 



732 WHITTIER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" My brain took fire : ' Is this,' I cried, 
' The end of prayer and preaching ? 
Then clown with pulpit, down with priest, 
And give us Nature's teaching !' 

" Foul shame and scorn be on ye all 
Who turn the good to evil, 
And steal the Bible from the Lord, 
And give it to the Devil ! 

" Than garbled text or parchment law 
I own a statute higher ; 
And God is true, though every book 
And every man 's a liar." — A Sabbath Scene, 



a 



Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us, 

Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low, 
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us 
To silence now ? 

" What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors 
Rights all our own ? In madness shall we barter, 
For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us, 
God and our charter ? " — A Summer. 

" And what are ye who strive with God 
Against the ark of his salvation, 
Moved by the breast of prayer abroad, 

With blessings for a dying nation ? 
What, but the stubble and the hay 

To perish, even as flax consuming, 
With all that bars His glorious way, 
Before the brightness of His coming ? " 

— The Pastoral Letter. 

3. Faith— Religious Fervor — Piety. — " It is charac- 
teristic of the man that his first poem should be of a relig- 
ious nature. . . . The impression made upon the mind 
is one of harmony and solemn stateliness, not unlike that of 



WHITTIER 733 

1 Thanatopsis,' composed by Bryant when he was about the 
same age as was Whittier when he wrote the ' Deity.' 
Many of Whittier's purely religious poems are among the most 
exquisite and beautiful ever written. The tender feeling, the 
warm-hearted trustfulness, and the reverent touch of his 
hymns speak directly to our hearts." — W. S. Kennedy. 

14 Whittier, though creedless, is one of the most religious 
of our poets. ... In these days of scepticism as to the 
possibility of the communication of the Divine Mind with the 
human, it is consolation to read his poem on ' The Eternal 
Goodness,' especially this stanza — 

1 I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care.' " 

— E. P. Whipple. 
" In the popular sense of the word, Whittier has no theol- 
ogy. It was one of the secrets of his great religious influence 
that he sang only of the simple essentials of faith. 
As he did not write of small subjects, so he did not take small 
views of large subjects. He was as free from the cage of sec- 
tarianism as a Danvers thrush rising from the tree-tops of Oak 
Knoll on a May morning. He soared when he sang. He 
poured out the truths that men must live by and that they 
can afford to die by or die for. ... I have sometimes 
thought that I would rather give a man on the verge of a 
great moral lapse a marked copy of Whittier than any other 
book in our language. In a word, he represents the broadest, 
because he represents the purest elements of life." — Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps. 

" Not thine to lean on priesthood's broken reed ; 
No barriers caged thee in a bigot's fold. 
Did zealots ask to syllable thy creed, 

Thou saidst ' Our Father,' and thy creed was told." 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



734 WHITTIER 

" Whittier is the most religious of secular poets, 
the Galahad of modern poets, not emasculate, but vigorous 
and pure ; he has borne the Christian's shield of faith and 
sword of the Spirit. . . . Whittier's religious mood is 
far from being superficial and temporary. It is the life of his 
genius, out of which flow his ideas of earthly and heavenly 
content. . . . It is difficult to see how a poem for sacred 
music, or for such an occasion, could be more adequately 
wrought [than Whittier's "Centennial Hymn."] . 
In fine, the element of faith gives a tone to the whole range 
of his verse both religious and secular." — E. C. Stedman. 
'* The faith that lifts, the courage that sustains, 
These thou wert sent to teach : 
Hot blood of battle beating in thy veins, 
Is twinned to a gentle speech." 

— Bayard Taylor. 

" His lyrics and idyls of the plain New England home, and 
his serene hymns of religious trust, rise from the pure depths of 
a sincere soul." — C. F. Richardson. 

" Whittier, alone, is religious in a high and inward sense. 
Some imperfections cling to all souls; but few have 
been observed in our time so well poised, so pure, and so 
stainless as his. . . . The ' Occasional Poems ' are 
characterized by an intense religious feeling, which melts the 
heart of any man who has lived among primitive Christians 
and known what simple and natural piety is. The 

religious element in Whittier's poems is something vital and 
inseparable. The supremacy of moral ideas is indeed incul- 
cated by almost all great poets." — F. H. Underwood. 

" Whatever else Whittier was, he was a profoundly religious 
man, who could not help taking life in earnest." — Barrett 
Wendell. 

" His expression of the religious feeling is always noble and 
impressive. He is one of the very few whose poems, written 
under the fervor of religious emotion, have taken a higher 



WHITTIER 735 

range and become true hymns. Several of these are already 
adopted into the books of praise." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" Through all his work runs the deep religious sense of rest 
in the shadow of the Everlasting Wings, despite his struggles, 
and let what will betide." — Harriet Prescott Spofford. 

If the consensus of criticism were wanting at this point, the 
poet has given us the following picture of his own religious 
nature in the beautiful poem entitled " My Namesake : " 

" He worshipped as his fathers did, 

And kept the faith of childish days, 
And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
He loved the good old ways. 

" While others trod the altar stairs 
He faltered like the publican ; 
And, while they praised as saints, his prayers 
Were those of sinful man. 



u 



For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, 

The trembling faith alone sufficed, 
That, through its cloud and flame, he saw 

The sweet, sad face of Christ." 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I see the wrong that round me lies, 
I feel the guilt within ; 
I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 
The world confess its sin. 

" Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
And tossed by storm and flood, 
To one fixed trust my spirit clings : 
I know that God is good ! 

" I long for household voices gone ; 
For vanished smiles I long, 
But God hath led my dear ones on, 
And He can do no wrong. 

— Ihe Eternal Goodness. 



736 WHITTIER 

" I have no answer for myself or thee, 
Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ; 
1 All is of God that is, and is to be ; 
And God is good.' Let this suffice us still, 
Resting in childlike trust upon his will 
Who moves to his great ends unthwarted by the ill." 

— Trust. 

" We see not, know not ; all our way 
Is night, — with Thee alone is day ; 
From out the torrent's troubled drift, 
Above the storm our prayers we lift : 
Thy will be done. 

" We take with solemn thankfulness 
Our burden up, nor ask it less, 
And count it joy that even we 
May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 

Whose will be done."— Thy Will Be Done. 

4. Humanitarianism — Sympathy. — In the poem en- 
titled " My Namesake " Whittier justly says of himself: 

" He loved the good and wise, but found 
His human heart to all akin 
Who met him on the common ground 
Of suffering and sin. 

" Whate'er his neighbor might endure 
Of pain or grief his own became ; 
For all the ills he could not cure 
He held himself to blame." 

" It will be seen that Whittier has not limited his sympa- 
thies to oppressed Africans nor even to his own persecuted 
people ; his generous spirit takes in the whole of suffering hu- 
manity. The wrongs of the Indian are often dwelt upon by 
him ; the prisoner for debt has a share of his pity; and with 
all his energy he has protested against capital punishment for 
crime. . . . [He is] a chivalrous philanthropist — pour- 



WHITTIER 737 

ing out his whole heart in lyrics for the poor and oppressed." 
— F. H. Underwood. 

" It has been said until it says itself that Whittier was the 
people's poet. This is true ; but he was more than that. He 
was the poet of a broad humanity. . . . He spent him- 
self on the great needs of humanity, and the great heart of 
humanity answered him. He went to that as straight as a cry 
of nature ; and he uplifted it as truly as the hand of Heaven. 
The common people heard him gladly. He stands apart in 
their choice and their affection, even from the dearest of 
their great plutarchy of American poets to which he be- 
longed. . . . The people loved him because he loved the 
people. It was his honor that he loved them nobly. He did 
not sink to their small or special phases. He sings to the 
strength, not to the weakness of the soul ; he does not con- 
ciliate passion and surrender ; he suggests prayer and power ; 
and as a substitute for temptation he enforces aspiration." 
— Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 

" It was no personal ambition that made Whittier the psalm- 
ist of the anti-slavery movement. . . . The suffering of 
man for man, the cry of the human, never fail to move him. 
He celebrates all brave deeds and acts of renunciation. The 
heroism of martyrs and resistants, of the Huguenots, the Vau- 
dois, the Quakers, the English reformers, serves him for many 
a ballad. . . . His most vivid pictures are of scenes 
which lie near his heart and relate to common life — to the 
love and longing, the simple joys and griefs of his neighbors 
at work and rest and worship." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Wherever he discovers the talisman of intellect he recog- 
nizes a brother. . . . He gives to humanity the songs he 
might have given to the eternal art." — C. F. Richai'dson. 

" There is room, even in the United States, for such a func- 
tion as that of poet of the people ; and here Whittier filled a 
mission apart from that of the other members of his particular 
group of New England bards." — T. IV. Higginson. 
47 



738 WHITTIER 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Than web of Persian loom most rare, 

Or soft divan, 
Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, 
Or hollow tree which man may share 

With suffering man. 

" I hear another voice : * The poor 
Are thine to feed ; 
Turn not the outcast from thy door, 
Nor give to bonds and wrong once more 
Whom God hath freed.' " 

— In the Evil Days. 

11 Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, — 
Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
Free hands and hearts are still your pride 
And duty done, your honor." 

— The Shoemakers. 

" In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and sea below, 
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen 

know ; 
God's stars and silence taught thee, as his angels only can, 
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is 

man." — The Branded Hand. 

" For gifts in His name of food and rest 
The tents of Islam of God are blest ; 
Thou who hast faith in the Christ above, 
Shall the Koran teach thee the Law of Love ? — 
O Christian ! — open thy heart and door, 
Cry east and west to the wandering poor : 
'Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
In the name of Christ the Compassionate 
And Merciful One, for thee I wait ! ' " — Charity. 



WHITTIER 739 

5. Consecration — Inspiration. — Like Milton, Whit- 
tier seems continually to be impressed with the thought that 
he has been divinely called and set apart for his high mission 
of song. Oliver Johnson has called him " the Prophet Bard 
of America." 

"The singer would seem to have felt himself set apart for 
God's great purposes ; he knew the burden of the prophet, 
and the vision of Ezekiel had been his ; and, like one who is 
an instrument in the use of Powers above and beyond, he 
sighs, 

' Oh, not of choice for themes of public wrong 
I leave the green and pleasant paths of song.' " 

— Harriet Prescott Spofford. 

The same estimate of Whittier has prompted Stedman to 
address to him a volume of poems, with the inscription " Ad 
Vatem." " For surely," adds Stedman, "no aged servant, 
his eyes having seen in good time the Lord's salvation, ever 
was more endowed with the love and reverence of a chosen 
people." Lowell, too, implies the same estimate when he 
addresses Whittier as follows : 

" All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard, 
Who was true to the Voice when such service was hard." 

" Poetry seems never to have been a pursuit to him, but a 
charge which was intrusted to him and which he had to de- 
liver when the spirit moved him, well or ill, as it happened ; 
but honestly, earnestly, and prayerfully." — F. H. Stoddard. 

"They [" Voices of Freedom"] were uttered at the call of 
duty and encouraged by the heavenly influences. The bur- 
den was upon the poet as upon the prophets of the Jews. 
Whittier never faltered in his mission. . . . His work in 
this world . . . has been inspired always by God and 
humanity. . . . He was a psalmist under a divine call." 
— F. H. Underwood. 

"The necessity laid on him as a poet was accepted by 



740 WHITTIER 

Whittier with the glad and solemn earnestness of a prophet ; 
and for sixty years he was more influential as a teacher of re 
ligion than any other man in America." — W. S. Kennedy. 

" In his outbursts against oppression and his cries unto 
the Lord, we recognize the prophetic fervor, still nearer its 
height in some of his personal poems, which popular instinct 
long ago attributed to him." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Whittier was not only the trumpeter of the Abolitionists, 
in those dark but splendid days of fighting positive and tangi- 
ble wrong ; he was the very trumpet itself, and he must have 
felt sometimes that the breath of the Lord blew through him." 
— R. W. Gilder. 

" Hermit of Amesbury, thou too hast heard, 
Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, 
And speakest only when thy soul is stirred." 

— Longfellow. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" So let it be. In God's own might 
We gird us for the coming fight, 
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours, 
In conflict with unholy powers, 
We grasp the weapons He has given : 
The Light and Truth and Love of Heaven." 

— The Moral Warfare. 

u And if, in our unworthiness, 
Thy sacrificial wine we press ; 
If from Thy ordeal's heated bars 
Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, 
Thy will be done ! 

" If, for the age to come, this hour 
Of trial hath vicarious power, 
And, blest by Thee, our present pain 
Be Liberty's eternal gain, 
Thy will be done ! 



WHITTIER 741 

" Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, 
The anthem of the destinies ! 
The minor of Thy loftier strain, 
Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain : 

Thy will be done ! " — Thy Will be Done. 

" We wait beneath the furnace-blast 
The pangs of transformation ; 
Not painlessly doth God recast 
And mould anew the nation. 
Hot burns the fire 
Where wrongs expire ; 
Nor spares the hand 
That from the land 
Uproots the ancient evil. 

" Then let the selfish lip be dumb, 

And hushed the breath of sighing ; 
Before the joy of peace must come 
The pains of purifying. 
God give us grace 
Each in his place 
To bear his lot, 
And, murmuring not, 
Endure and wait and labor ! " 

— Luther'' s Hymn. 

6. Nationalism — Sectionalism. — When Whittier was 

but thirty-nine years old, Griswold said of him: " He may 
reasonably be styled a national poet. His works breathe 
affection for and faith in our republican polity and unshackled 
religion." The later productions of the poet have caused 
both American and foreign critics to adopt Griswold's estimate. 
But \Vhittier is national because he is sectional — because the 
profoundest moral and political ideas of his particular section 
have gradually permeated the entire Union. Francis Park- 
man once toasted the Quaker poet as follows: " The Poet of 
New England. His genius drew its nourishment from her 



742 WHITTIER 

soil; his pages are the mirror of her outward nature and the 
strong utterance of her inward life." 

" From the day, now more than thirty years ago, when he 

wrote : 

' For a pale hand was beckoning 
The Huguenot on, 
And in blackness and ashes 
Behind was St. John,' 

to his last idyl of New England life, he has rarely chosen a 
foreign theme, however seductive, or an ancient legend, unless 
it could be made to embody some aspiration of his large and 
loving humanity." — Bayard Taylor. 

" Whittier was distinctively a local poet, a New Englander ; 
but to acknowledge this does not diminish his honor, nor is 
he thereby set in a secondary place. . . . New England 
had, moreover, this advantage, that it was destined to set the 
stamp of its character upon the larger nation in which it was 
an element ; so that if Whittier be regarded, as he sometimes 
is, as a representative American poet, it is not without justice. 
He is really national so far as the spirit of New England has 
passed into the nation at large. . . . There can be little 
question too, that he is a representative of a far larger portion 
of the American people than any other of the elder poets." 
— G. E. Woodberry. 

Stedman indorses Parkman in calling Whittier the " poet of 
New England;" but he qualifies this estimate of Whittier's 
thought and genius by adding that " this hive of individuality 
[New England] has sent out swarms, and scattered its ideas 
like pollen throughout the northern belt of our States. As far 
as these have taken hold, modified by change and experience, 
New England stands for the nation and her singer for the na- 
tional poet. . . . All in all, and more than others, he 
has read the heart of New England, and expressed the con- 
victions of New England at her height of moral supremacy. 
But he was the singer of what was not an empty 



WHITTIER 743 

day, and of a section whose movement became that of a na- 
tion, and whose purpose in the end was grandly consum- 
mated." 

" ' Snow- Bound ' is our one national idyl, the perfect poem 
of New England winter life." — .R. W. Gilder. 

''He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He 
loves America because it is the land of freedom. ... If 
anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete 
works of Whittier, he or she will find that one of the pre- 
dominant characteristics of his writings is their indigenous 
quality, their national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too no- 
torious to need mention. He, if any one, merits the proud 
title of ' A Representative American Poet.' His whole soul 
is on fire with love of country. As is the case of Whitman, 
his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered 
all the affectionate wealth of his nature. . . . He has a 
distinctive national spirit or vision ; he is democratic in his 
feelings, and treats of indigenous subjects." — IV. S. Kennedy. 

" The home-bred singer, like so many of his predecessors, 
framed the simple chant of that which he best knew. 
The young editor in various Eastern cities never lost his con- 
stant and affectionate memories of the lovely Essex county 
which gave him birth ; and he carried into his political work 
the placid strength of the Merrimack in its familiar meadows 
near the sea. His genius is wholly instinctive and national." 
— C. -F. Richardson. 

" His themes have been mainly chosen from his own times 
and country, from his own neighborhood, even. 
Whittier has done as much for the scenery of New England as 
Scott for that of Scotland. . . . One quality above all 
others in Whittier — his innate and unstudied Americanism — . 
has rendered him alike acceptable to his countrymen and to 
his kindred beyond the sea." — James Grant Wilson. 

"John Greenleaf Whittier is, in some respects, the most 
American of all the American poets. ... It is safe to 



744 WIIITTIER 

say that he has been less influenced by other literature than 
any of our poets — with the exception, perhaps, of Bryant." 
— R. H. Stoddard. 

" To our own mind, Mr. Whittier is perhaps the most 
peculiarly American poet of any that our country has pro- 
duced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant belong as much 
to one land as to another ; and all the rest of our singers : 
Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren — with the 
single exception of Joaquin Miller — might as well have been 
born in the land of Shakespeare and Milton and Byron as in 
their own. But Whittier is entirely the poet of his own soil. 
All through his verse we see the elements that created it." 
— Harriet Prescott Spofford. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Our father's God! From out whose hand 
The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
We meet to day, united, free, 
And loyal to our land and Thee ; 
To thank Thee for the era done 
And trust Thee for the opening one. 

" Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
The war-flags of a gathered world, 
Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
The Orient's mission of good will ; 
And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
Send back its Argonauts of peace." 

— Centennial Hymn. 

" The riches of the Commonwealth 

Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 
And more to her than gold or grain, 
The cunning hand and cultured brain. 

11 For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock. 
And still maintains, with milder laws 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause !" — Our State. 



WTITTTIER 745 

" We give thy natal day to hope, 

O Country of our love and prayer ! 
Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and air. 

" Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 

By God's grace only stronger made ; 
In future task before thee set 

Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 

" The fathers sleep, but men remain 
As wise, as true, as brave as they ; 
Why count the loss and not the gain ? — 
The best is that we have to-day."— Our Country. 

7. Genius for Ballad-Making— Lyrical Power. — 

"We have no American ballad-writer — that is, writer of bal- 
lads founded on our native history and tradition — who can be 
compared with him, either in the range or skilful treatment 
o f h is mater i al . " — Bayard Taylor. 

" These fresh improvisations [ballads] are as perfect works 
of art as the finest Greek marbles. . . . Such ballads as 
'The Witch's Daughter' and 'Telling of the Bees' are as 
absolutely faultless productions as Wordsworth's ' We are 
Seven ' and his ' Lucy Gray,' or as Uhland's ' Des Sanger's 
Fluch* or William Blake's ' Mary.' . . . The period in 
Whittier's life from about 1858 to 1868 we may call the Bal- 
lad Decade; for within this time were produced most of his 
immortal ballads. We say immortal, believing that if all 
else that he has written shall perish, his finest ballads will 
carry his name down to remote posterity. . . . 'The 
Tent on the Beach ' is mainly a series of ballads ; and ' Snow- 
Bound,' although not a ballad, is still a narrative poem closely 
allied to this species of poetry, the difference between a ballad 
and an idyl being that one is made to be sung and the other 
to be read ; both narrate events as they occur, and leave to 
the reader all sentiments of reflection." — IV. S. Kennedy. 



746 WHITTIER 

" His poem itself [" Cassandra Southwick "] can scarcely 
be overrated. The march of the verse has something that re- 
minds us of the rhythm of Macaulay's fine classical ballads, 
something which is resemblance, not imitation." — Mary 
Russell Mitford. 

''Almost alone among American poets he has revived the 
legends of his neighborhood in verse, and his ' Floyd Ireson ' 
is among the best of modern ballads, surpassed by none save 
Scott, if even by him." — -James Grant Wilson. 

" In reality, he has managed the ballad form with more 
skill than other measures." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" There can be no question as to Whittier's genius for 
ballad-making."— E. P. Whipple. 

"Lyrics such as 'Telling the Bees,' 'Maud Muller,' and 
' My Playmate ' are miniature classics ; of this kind are those 
which confirmed his reputation and still make his volumes 
real household books of song." — E. C. Stedman. 
" There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing 
Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing." 

— Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Then rose up John de Matha 

In the strength the Lord Christ gave, 
And begged through all the land of France 
The ransom of the slave. 



' God save us ! ' cried the captain, 
' For nought can us avail; 
Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks 
Her rudder and her sail ! 



' ' Behind us are the Moormen ; 
At sea we sink or strand ; 
There's death upon the water, 
There's death upon the land ! ' 



WHITTIER 747 

" Then up spake John de Matha : 
God's errands never fail ! 
Take thou the mantle which I wear, 
And make of it a sail.' 

" They raised the cross-wrought mantle, 
The blue, the white, the red; 
And straight before the wind off-shore 
The ship of Freedom spread." 

— The Mantle of St. John De Matha. 

" They bound him on the fearful rack, 

When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark, 
He saw the light of shining robes, 
And knew the face of good St. Mark. 

" Then sank the iron rack apart, 
The cords released their cruel clasp, 
The pincers, with the teeth of fire, 
Fell broken from the torturer's grasp." 

— The Legend of St. Mark. 

" A weight seemed lifted from my heart, — a pitying friend was 

nigh, 
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye ; 
And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, 
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea, — 

" ' Pile my ship with bars of silver, — pack with coins of Spanish 

gold, 
From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, 
By the living God who made me ! — I would sooner in your bay 
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away ! ' " 

— Cassandra Southwick. 

8. Power of Characterization. — " The two poems 
upon Sumner are eminent specimens of careful study and 
strong portraiture. The same may be said of Dr. Howe, of 
Mrs. Keene, of Webster in 'The Lost Occasion' — of Field 
and Taylor — and still more of the touching and matchless 
eulogy of Burns. The concluding stanzas of the last-men- 
tioned poem are so full of tenderness, shadowed by inevitable 



748 WHITTIER 

regret, so fervent in the appreciation of genius, and so throb- 
bing with manly love, that it is hard for a man of sensibility 
to read them without tears. . . . The language of his 
genius was manifested in ' Randolph of Roanoke,' a magnifi- 
cent tribute to the memory of that great man, and all the 
more so in that it was wrung from the lips of an opponent. 
As a piece of character-painting I know not where to look 
for its equal. . . . He is a remarkable critic of character, 
as he proved in his ' Ichabod,' in ' Sumner,' and in the 
poem entitled ' My Namesake,' a keen, searching examination 
of his mental qualities and of the intention and scope of his 
poetry." — E. H. Underwood. 

"In his tribute to the eminent men and women of his 
day, ... we observe a fine discrimination of character 
and the power of placing mental and moral traits in high 
relief. ... As a piece of character-painting [Randolph 
of Roanoke] I know not where to look for its equal, and 
the marvel is that the portrait of this great slave-holder should 
have been drawn so justly by such a partisan as Whittier. 
' The Barefoot Boy ' is an exquisite character- 
study, which, as far as my recollection goes, has no parallel 
in English poetry." — R. H. Stoddard. 

"As a writer of personal tributes, whether paeans or mono- 
dies, the reform bard, with his peculiar faculty of characteri- 
zation, has been happily gifted. . . . The conception of 
' Ichabod ' is most impressive. Those darkening lines were 
graven too deep for obliteration." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Reference should be made to the numerous personal 
tributes — often full of grace, of tender feeling, and of true 
honor paid to the humble — which he was accustomed to lay as 
his votive wreath on the graves of his companions. 
The verses to Garrison and Sumner, naturally stand first in 
fervor and range as well as in interest." — G. E. Wo'odberry. 

" Their [his characters'] likeness canvas never will so well 
repeat." — Harriet Prescott Spofford. 



WHITTIER 749 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" One language held his heart and lip, 
Straight onward to his goal he trod, 
And 'proved the highest statesmanship 
Obedience to the voice of God. 

" No wail was in his voice ; none heard, 

When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew, 
The weakness of a doubtful word ; 
His duty, and the end, he knew. 

" For there was nothing base or small 
Or craven in his soul's broad plan ; 
Forgiving all things personal, 
He hated only wrong to man." 

— On Charles Sumner. 

" Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 

Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears ; 
We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years. 

" When Peace brings Freedom in her train, 
Let happy lips his songs rehearse ; 
His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse." 

— Bryant on his Birthday. 

" His still the keen analysis 

Of men and moods, electric wit, 
Free play of mirth, and tenderness 
To heal the slightest wound from it. 

" And his the pathos touching all 

Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 
Its hopes, its fears, its final call 
And rest beneath the violets. 

" His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, 
The wisdom of the latter days, 

And tender memories of the old." — Our Autocrat. 



750 WHITTIER 

9. Dexterous Use of Proper Names.— Whittier's 

fluency has been the theme of general remark. It is perhaps 
nowhere better illustrated than in the remarkable way in 
which he blends formidable proper names into smooth 
verse. 

"The Indian names are made as musical as Homer's 
enumeration of the Greek ships." — Harriet Prescott Spofford. 

" That he had a certain amount of natural ear is shown by 
his use of proper names, in which, after his early period of 
Indian experiments had passed, he rarely erred." — T. W. 
Higginson. 

" The musical nomenclature of the red aborigines is finely 
handled, and such words as Pennacook, Babboosuck, Coutoo- 
cook, Bashaba, and Weetamoc chime out here and there 
along the pages with as silvery a sweetness as the Tuscan words 
in Macaulay's 'Lays.' " — W. S. Ke?inedy. 

" Through thee her Merrimacs and Agrochooks 
And many a name uncouth even gracious looks." 

— Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick 
In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ; 
And small wild hens, in reed-snares caught, 
From the banks of Sondargadee brought ; 

" Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, 

Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, 
Cranberries picked from the Squamscot bog, 
And grapes from the vines of the Piscataquog." 

— The Bridal of Pennacook. 

" Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, 
Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, 
The winding ways of Pemigewasset, 
And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles." 

— Revisited. 



WH1TTIER 751 

" Still let them come, — from Quito's walls 
And from the Orinoco's tide, 
From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, 
From Santa Fe and Yucatan, — 
Men who by swart Guerrero's side 
Proclaimed the deathless rights of man, 
Broke every bond and fetter off, 
And hailed in every sable serf 
A free and brother Mexican ! " 
— The World's Convention of Friends of Emancipation. 

10. Biblical Imagery. — The most superficial observer 
cannot fail to be impressed with Whittier's remarkable 
acquaintance with Holy Writ. It colors all his pages, and 
supplies him with a large proportion of his imagery. 

" The injunction to beware of the man of one book applies 
to the poet whose Bible was interpreted for him by a Quaker 
mother. Its letter is rarely absent from his verse, and its spirit 
never. His hymns, than which he composes nothing more 
spontaneously, are so many acts of faith." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Whittier has drawn great refreshment and inspiration 
from the thrice-winnowed wheat and the living wells of Old- 
Testament literature." — W. S. Kennedy. 

"His strong imagination fed upon it [the Bible]. And 
as its very phraseology is blended with his familiar and his 
poetic speech, so, more than this, his whole nature drew upon 
the fountains of its waters. It is interesting to observe how, 
throughout his poetry, allusions to Biblical characters and 
passages fall as naturally from his lips as Greek or Roman 
allusions from Milton's." — G. E. Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Give and receive ; go forth and bless 

The world that needs the hand and heart 
Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
No less than Mary's better part." 

— At School-close. 



752 WHITTIER 

" Another sound my spirit hears, 

A deeper sound, that drowns them all, — 
A voice of pleading choked with tears, 
The call of human hopes and fears, 
The Macedonian cry to Paul ! " 

— The Summons. 

" And Samson's riddle is our own to-day, 
Of sweetness from the strong, 
Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away 
From the rent jaws of wrong." 

— The Hive at Gettysburg. 

ii. Simplicity — Sincerity — Artlessness — "His 

artless art, as it has been well called, was but developed in 
his later years. . . . What he said was best said in the 
simple, natural way in which he chose to say it." — Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps. 

"As Longfellow's finely modulated instrument will carry 
some of his light conceptions farther down the years than 
they would be likely to win through their own force ; so we 
may reasonably have confidence that the entire naturalness of 
Whittier's art, despite its narrow technical range — he never 
wrote a sonnet, for example — will continue long to please 
the lovers of poetry. " — G. E. Woodberry. 

" The wasteful irregularity and hurried excess which have 
diminished or destroyed the value of so much of Whittier's 
writings — and so much of American literature — here [in 
" Snow-Bound "] gives place to the simplicity of artless art, 
lightly touched and slightly transfigured by gleams of that 
ideal excellence toward which life and its reflecting litera- 
ture aspire." — C. E. Richardson. 

" One and all of them [the narrative poems] we may cer- 
tainly call simple, earnest, artless, and beautifully true to the 
native traditions and temper of New England." — Barrett 
Wendell. 

" He is always simple, always free from that turgidness 



WHITTIER 753 

and mixture of metaphors which often mar the writings of 
Lowell." — T. IV. Higginson. 

" At every step of the analysis it is not with art but with 
matter, not with the literature of taste but with that of life, 
not with a poet's skill but with a man's soul, that we find 
ourselves dealing; in a word, it is with character almost 
solely ; and it is this which has made him the poet of his 
people, as the highest art might have failed to do, because he 
has put his New England birth and breeding — the common 
inheritance of her freedom-loving, human, and religious 
people which he shared — into plain living, yet on such a level 
of distinction that his virtues have honored the land." — G. 
E. Woodberry. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" We saw the slow tides go and come, 
The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, 
The gray rocks touched with tender bloom 
Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. 

" We saw in richer sunsets lost 

The sombre pomp of showery noons ; 
And signalled spectral sails that crossed 
The weird, low light of rising moons. 

11 On stormy eves from cliff and head 

We saw the white spray tossed and spurned ; 
While over all, in gold and red, 

Its face of fire the lighthouse turned." 

— A Sea Dream. 

" The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
Their song was soft and low ; 
The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
Were falling like the snow. 

" The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
The orchard birds sang clear ; 
The sweetest and the saddest day 
It seemed of all the year. 
48 



754 WHITTIER 

" For, more to me than birds and flowers, 
My playmate left her home, 
And took with her the laughing spring, 
The music and the bloom. 

'* She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 
She laid her hand in mine : 
What more could ask the bashful boy 
Who fed her father's kine ? 

" She left us in the bloom of May ; 
The constant years told o'er 
Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
But she came back no more. 

" I walked, with noiseless feet, the round 
Of uneventful years ; 
Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 
And reap the autumn ears." — My Playmate. 

" No bird-song floated down the hill, 
The tangled bank below was still ; 

11 No rustle from the birchen stem, 
No ripple from the water's hem. 

" The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
We felt the falling of the dew ; 

" For, from us, ere the day was done, 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

" But on the river's farther side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified, — 

" A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day without its glare. 

" With us the damp, the chill, the gloom ; 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom ; 

" While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between." 

— The River Path. 



TENNYSON, 1809-1892 

Biographical Outline. — Alfred Tennyson, born at Som- 
ersby, North Lincolnshire, Augtst 6, 1809 ; father rector of 
Somersby ; Tennyson is the fourth of twelve children, and 
two of his seven brothers also become poets of some distinc- 
tion ; his father was the son of an English gentleman, who 
had disinherited him in favor of a younger brother ; Tenny- 
son is taught at home till his seventh year, when he is sent to 
Lowth to live with his grandmother and to attend the gram- 
mar school of that town ; he passes four years unpleasantly at 
this school, under a strict and passionate master; in 1820 he 
returns to Somersby, and remains there under his father's tui- 
tion till he enters college ; he becomes an omnivorous reader, 
especially of poetry, in his father's good library, and is in- 
spired by the charm of his rural surroundings at Somersby, 
which were celebrated later in his "Ode to Memory; " in 
his thirteenth year, in a letter to his mother, he writes a crit- 
ical review of Milton's "Samson Agonistes," illustrating his 
points by references to Homer, Dante, and other poets ; he 
began to write verse at the age of eight, first praising the 
flowers in Thomsonian blank verse and then, having fallen 
under the spell of Pope's " Homer," writing "hundreds and 
hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre ; " before his / 
thirteenth year he wrote an " epic " of six thousand lines, and 
his father predicted, " if Alfred should die, one of our great- 
est poets will have gone;" in 1827 Tennyson collaborates 
with his brother Charles in publishing, through a bookseller 
of Lowth, a volume entitled " Poems by Two Brothers," for 
which they receive ^20, one-half being taken in books ; Ten- 
nyson's part in this volume consists mainly of imitations of 

755 



756 TENNYSON 

Byron, Moore, and other favorites, and is inferior to his 
earlier poems, which he rejected from the published volume as 
being " too much out of the common for the public taste;" 
these rejected poems, of which specimens were afterward col- 
lected by his son, show an astonishing command of metre and 
music. 

In February, 1828, with his brother Charles, Tennyson 
matriculates at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon 
becomes intimate with such stimulating companions as J. R. 
Spedding, Monckton Milnes(Lord Houghton), J. M. Kemble, 
Merivale, R. C. Trench, Charles Buller, and Arthur Hallam, 
the youngest son of the historian and the dearest friend of 
Tennyson ; in " In Memoriam," of which Hallam is the sub- 
ject, the poet calls him " as near perfect as mortal man can 
be ; " Tennyson does excellent work as a student at Cam- 
bridge, devoting himself especially to the classics as well as to 
history and the natural sciences ; he also takes a keen interest 
in the political questions of the day, and works constantly at 
metrical composition ; in June, 1829, at the instigation of 
his father, he competes for and wins the chancellor's medal, 
with verses entitled " Timbuctoo ; " this was really an old 
poem of Tennyson's, written in blank verse on " The Battle 
of Armageddon ' ' and adapted to the new theme ; Alfred 
Ainger calls it "as Tennysonian as anything the author ever 
produced;" Tennyson's competitors in this contest were 
Milnes and Hallam ; in 1830 he publishes a volume of one hun- 
dred and fifty pages, entitled " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," and 
containing, besides other poems afterward discarded, " Clari- 
bel," "An Ode to Memory," "Mariana in the Moated 
Grange," "The Dying Swan," etc.; although not at first 
appreciated by the public, Tennyson's work in this volume is 
praised by Leigh Hunt and by John Bowring, who commends 
it in the Westminster Review ; in the summer of 1830, with 
his friend Hallam, Tennyson makes an expedition to the 
Pyrenees, where he receives much poetic stimulation from the 



TENNYSON 757 

beautiful scenery and where he writes parts of " GEnone " in 
the valley of Carterets in February, 1831. 

After two and one-half years at Cambridge he is compelled 
by the ill health of his father to leave the university ; in 1830 
he expresses disapproval of the educational methods prevailing 
at Cambridge, in a sonnet, complaining that " they taught 
him nothing, feeding not the heart; " his father dies within 
a month after Tennyson leaves Cambridge, and Arthur Hal- 
lam becomes a very frequent and intimate visitor of the poet 
and his mother at the Somersby rectory ; in 1831 Hallam be- 
comes engaged to Tennyson's sister Mary ; their ideal court- 
ship is immortalized later by the poet in " In Memoriam ; " 
as the new rector of Somersby did not care to occupy the 
manse, the Tennysons remained there till 1837 ; during these 
years Tennyson frequently visits Hallam's family in Wimpole 
Street, London, and there ardently discusses literary and so- 
cial questions, while his manuscript poems are handed about 
freely among his intimate friends for criticism before publica- 
tion ; in the summer of 1832 Tennyson and Hallam make a 
tour of the Rhine district, and in December of that year the 
poet publishes " Poems by Alfred Tennyson," a volume in- 
cluding " The Lady of Shalott," "The Miller's Daughter," 
" The Palace of Art," " The Lotos Eaters," and " A Dream 
of Fair Women; " three hundred volumes of the new poems 
are promptly sold, but they are condemned in a silly and bru- 
tal criticism in the Quarterly Review, with the result that 
Tennyson publishes no more verse for ten years. 

On September 15, 1833, Arthur Hallam dies suddenly at 
Vienna, while travelling with his father ; his body is brought 
to England, and is interred at Clevedon, Somerset, in a church 
overlooking the Bristol Channel ; Tennyson and his family are 
overwhelmed by the loss, and he writes at this time fragments 
of " In Memoriam," though this poem was not completed 
and published till ten years afterward ; about this time he 
writes also " Two Voices," and "Thoughts on Suicide;" 



758 TENNYSON 

he afterward declared that the loss of Hallam blotted out all 
joy from his life and made him long for death ; during the 
next few years he remains at Somersby, " reading widely all 
literatures, polishing old poems, making new ones, correspond- 
ing with Spedding, Kemble, Milnes, and others, and acting 
as father and adviser to the family at home; " at the mar- 
riage of his brother Charles, in 1836, Tennyson takes into the 
church as a bridesmaid the elder sister of his brother's bride, 
Miss Emily, daughter of Henry Sellwood, a solicitor at Horn- 
castle, and eventually they become engaged ; with his mother 
and the rest of the family he removes, in 1837, from Somersby 
to High Beech in Epping Forest, where they remain till 
1840 ; they go thence to Tunbridge Wells for a year and, in 
1841, settle at Boxley near Maidstone; meantime Tennyson 
continues to write poetry and completes, as early as 1835, the 
"Morted' Arthur," " The Day Dream," and "The Gar- 
dener's Daughter ; " in 1837 he contributes to " a volume of 
the 'keepsake' order" his poem "The Tribute;" during 
this year he also meets Gladstone, who becomes thenceforward 
his warm admirer and friend ; meantime Miss Sellwood's fam- 
ily attempt to break off her engagement with Tennyson by 
forbidding all association and correspondence between them ; 
in 1842 he publishes his " Poems " in two volumes, and this 
establishes his rank as then the greatest living poet ; besides 
the chief poems from the volumes of 1830 and 1833 and the 
others just mentioned, these volumes contained " Locksley 
Hall," "Godiva," " The Two Voices," "Ulysses," "A 
Vision of Sin," "Break, Break, Break," and other lyrics; 
meantime what little capital the poet's family have is hope- 
lessly lost by an unfortunate investment in a scheme for me- 
chanical wood-carving, and they pass through "a season of 
real hardship," during which Tennyson suffers so seriously 
from hypochondria that his friends despair of his life ; his 
critical condition causes friends to appeal in his behalf to the 
prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, and in September, 1845, a 



TENNYSON 759 

pension of ^200 a year is granted to the poet from the civil 
list ; the specific appeal is said to have been made by Monck- 
ton Milnes, who won Peel by reading to him " Ulysses," 
although the prime minister had known nothing of Tennyson 
before. 

By 1846 the "Poems" reach a fourth edition; during 
this year Tennyson is boldly assailed by Bulwer Lytton in his 
"New Timon," and is called "Schoolmiss Alfred," while 
his claims to the pension are challenged ; Tennyson replies 
vigorously in lines entitled " The New Timon and the Poets," 
which appear in Punch over the pseudonym " Alcibiades," 
having been sent to that journal by John Forster without 
Tennyson's knowledge; a week later Tennyson publicly ex- 
presses his regret and recantation of the whole matter in lines 
entitled " An Afterthought," still published in his collected 
poems under the head of " Literary Squabbles; " in 1847 he 
publishes " The Princess," without the six incidental lyrics, 
which were added in the third edition, in 1850 ; " The Prin- 
cess " reaches five editions in six years, but does not add 
greatly to Tennyson's popularity ; in June, 1850, he publishes 
anonymously " In Memoriam," on which he had worked at 
intervals during the previous seventeen years ; its authorship 
is at once recognized ; the public welcomes it with enthusiasm, 
but the critics are less warm in their praise ; the poem is bit- 
terly attacked by party theologians and by some reviewers ; 
in April, 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, the laureateship 
was offered to Rogers, who declined it on the ground of age ; 
then, chiefly because of Prince Albert's admiration of "In 
Memoriam," the honor is offered to Tennyson and is ac- 
cepted ; the sales of " In Memoriam " insure to Tennyson an 
income that warrants matrimony, and he is married to Miss 
Sellwood June 13, 1850, at Shiplake-on-the-Thames, where 
the lovers first met after a separation of ten years ; in after 
days Tennyson used to say, ' ' The peace of God came into 
my life when I wedded her." 



760 TENNYSON 

After his marriage Tennyson settles at Chapel House, 
Montpelier Row, Twickenham ; in 185 1 he writes his sonnet 
to Macready on the occasion of the actor's retirement from 
the stage; in July of the same year, with his wife, he visits 
the baths of Lucca, Florence, and the Italian Lakes, return- 
ing by way of the Splugen — a tour that he afterward cele- 
brated in ''The Daisy;" later in 1851 he writes several 
patriotic poems, including " Bri tains, Hold Your Own," and 
" All Hands Round," which are published in The Examiner ; 
in August, 1852, his second child, a son, is born (the first 
child died at birth) and is named Hallam, Henry Hallam 
and Frederick Denison Maurice standing godfathers ; on the 
death of Wellington, in November, 1852, Tennyson writes his 
great " Ode to Wellington," which appears on the morning of 
the funeral, and excites "all but universal depreciation; " in 
1853, while visiting in the Isle of Wight, the poet learns of a 
house called Farringford for rent at Freshwater, and, after in- 
specting it with his wife, he hires it with the privilege of a 
purchase later on ; about two years later he buys it with the 
income from his poem " Maud," and it becomes his home 
during the greater part of every year until his death ; one ob- 
ject in settling at Freshwater was to escape the intrusions on 
his working hours incident to a residence near London ; in 
March, 1854, another son (Lionel) is born, and Tennyson 
arranges for an edition of his poems to be illustrated by Mil- 
lais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti ; during this year he visits 
Glastonbury and other places connected with the Arthurian 
legend, preparatory to writing his " Idylls of the King," and 
also works on " Maud ; " in December, 1855, he reads of the 
disastrous charge at Balaclava, and writes at one sitting his 
" Charge of the Light Brigade," which is printed in The 
Examiner of December 9th ; in June, 1855, the University of 
Oxford confers on him the degree of D.C.L., and in the 
following autumn he publishes "Maud" in a volume con- 
taining also "The Daisy," "Ode on the Duke of Well- 



TENNYSON 761 

ington," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Break, 
Break, Break," etc. ; "Maud" is at first received with vio- 
lent antagonism and even derision ; not discouraged, Tenny- 
son continues to work at the Arthurian poems, and completes 
" Enid " during the autumn of 1856 ; during 1858 he com- 
pletes " Guinevere," and begins his dramatic lyrics in mono- 
logues entitled, respectively, " The Grandmother " (published 
in Once a Week in July, 1859, with an illustration by Mil- 
lais) and " Sea Dreams " (published in Mac millan' s Magazine 
in i860) ; in the autumn of 1859 he publishes "The Idylls 
of the King," which are at once received with great popu- 
lar favor ; among other noted men who praise the poems are 
Jowett, Macaulay, Dickens, and Ruskin j from this time till 
his death Tennyson's popularity remains unabated ; in i860 
he visits Cornwall, Devonshire, and the Scilly Islands, and in 
186 1 Auvergne and the Pyrenees, where he writes "All along 
the Valley," in memory of his visit thirty years before with 
Arthur Hallam ; in 1 861 he prepares a new edition of "The 
Idylls of the King," and adds the dedication to the prince 
consort, then lately deceased ; during 1862 he works on 
"Enoch Arden," has his first introduction to the Queen, and 
makes a tour through Derbyshire and Yorkshire in company 
with F. T. Palgrave; during 1863 he completes " Aylmer's 
Field," and writes his "Welcome to Alexandra," on the 
occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Wales ; in 1864 
he publishes the volume called "Enoch Arden," of which 
60,000 copies were sold at once ; this volume contained, 
besides "Enoch Arden," "Aylmer's Field," "Tithonus" 
(reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine), " The Grandmother," 
" Sea Dreams," and " The Northern Farmer : Old Style ; " 
with the exception of " In Memoriam " this became the most 
popular volume of Tennyson's works, and it has been trans- 
lated into Danish, German, Latin, Dutch, French, Hungarian, 
and Bohemian. 

Tennyson's next volume, "The Holy Grail," appeared in 



762 TENNYSON 

1869, and contained also "The Passing of Arthur," "Pel- 
leas and Etarre," " The Victim," "Wages," " The Higher 
Pantheism," and "The Northern Farmer: New Style;" 
during this year he is made an honorary fellow of Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge ; during 1868 he builds his new home, Aid- 
worth, near Haslemere, where he afterward resides during a 
part of every year; in 1872 he adds " Gareth and Lynette " 
to the Arthurian cycle; in 1873 he declines a baronetcy 
offered by Gladstone, and in 1874 refuses the same honor 
when offered by Disraeli ; in 1875 he publishes his first blank- 
verse drama, "Queen Mary;" although not popular in its 
tone, this drama was adapted to the stage by Henry Irving, 
and was successfully presented in April, 1876 ; during 1876 
Tennyson publishes his other drama, " Harold ; " in 1879 he 
reprints " The Lover's Tale," based on a story of Boccaccio, 
and written when he was under twenty years of age, printed 
in 1833, and then distributed only among a few personal 
friends ; it was republished only because it was being exten- 
sively pirated; in December, 1879, the Kendals. produce 
Tennyson's little blank-verse drama "The Falcon," also 
based on one of Boccaccio's stories, and it has a run of sixty- 
seven nights; this drama was first published in 1884, in the 
same volume with "The Cup;" in March, 1880, Ten- 
nyson accepts an invitation to stand for an election to the 
lord chancellorship of Glasgow University, but promptly 
withdraws his name on learning that it is to be a political 
contest and that he is expected to represent the Conservative 
Party; during this year, under the advice of his physician, 
he seeks better health by a tour, with his son, to Venice, 
Bavaria, and the Tyrol, and publishes the volume called " Bal- 
lads and Poems;" this volume included "The Revenge," 
"Rizpah," "The Children's Hospital," "The First Quar- 
rel," "The Defence of Lucknow," and "The Northern 
Cobbler;" during 187 1 Tennyson's drama "The Cup" is 
successfully presented, and he sits for his portrait to Millais ; 



TENNYSON ^6$ 

in November, 1882, another drama, "The Promise of May," 
is produced with but little success; in January, 1884, after 
much hesitation, he accepts a peerage offered by the Queen 
on the recommendation of Gladstone ; during this year he 
publishes "The Cup," "The Falcon," and his tragedy of 
" Becket ; " in 1885 appears " Tiresias and Other Poems," 
including a prologue to Tennyson's friend, Edward FitzGerald 
(then lately deceased), besides "The Ancient Sage" and the 
Irish dialect poem "To-morrow;" he is deeply affected 
by the death of his second son, Lionel, who died in April, 
1886, while on the return voyage from a visit to Lord Duf- 
ferin in India; in December, 1886, Tennyson publishes a 
volume containing "The Praise of May" and "Locksley 
Hall Sixty Years After; " during 1887 he cruises in a friend's 
yacht, visits Devonshire and Cornwall, prepares another vol- 
ume of poems for publication, and writes "Vastness" (pub- 
lished in Mac?nillari 's Magazine) and " Owd Roa ; " during 
1888 he is dangerously ill with rheumatic gout ; in the spring 
of 1889 he makes a voyage in the yacht of his friend Lord 
Brassey, and in the following December publishes " Demeter 
and Other Poems," including " Merlin and the Gleam," an 
autobiographical allegory, and "Crossing the Bar," which 
was written one day while crossing the Solent on his annual 
journey from Aldworth to Farringford ; he is in feeble health 
during 1890, but in 1891 he completes for Daly, the Ameri- 
can manager, the drama "Robin Hood," which was pro- 
duced in New York under the title " The Foresters ; " during 
1892 Tennyson writes his " Lines on the Death of the Duke 
of Clarence," cruises to Jersey, and visits London; during 
this, his last year, he also looks over the proofs of an intended 
volume of poems, " The Death of CEnone," and takes a deep 
interest in the forthcoming production of " Becket " by Irv- 
ing; he dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in 
the "Poets' Corner" at Westminster Abbey, many of the 
most famous men of England acting as his pall-bearers. 



764 TENNYSON 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON TENNYSON. 

Brooke, S. A., "Tennyson, his Art," etc. New York, 1894, Putnam. 
Stedman, E. C, "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 150-223. 
Van Dyke, H., "The Poetry of Tennyson." New York, 1889, Scrib- 

ner, v. index. 
Taine, H., " History of English Literature." New York, 1875, Holt, 

3: 391-418. 
Kingsley, C, "Literary and General Lectures." New York, 1890, 

Macmillan, 103-127. 
Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890, Scribner, 

154-158. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, i: 

333-346. 
Taylor, B., '* Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 1-37. 
Hutton, R. H., "Essays, Theological and Literary." London, 1877, 

Daldy & Co., 2 : 303-369. 
Rearden, T. H., " Petrarch and other Essays." San Francisco, 1893, 

Murdoch, 43-104. 
Cooke, G. W., " Poets and Problems." Boston. 1887, Ticknor, 57-87. 
Spedding, J., " Reviews and Discussions. " London, 1879, Kegan Paul 

&Co., 277-299. 
Bagehot, W., "Literary Studies." Hartford, 1891, Travellers' Insur- 
ance Co. , 2 : 338-390. 
Home, R. H., "A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 

193-21 1. 
Masson, D., " In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Ishester, 

333-3%* • 
Robertson, J. M., " Essays toward a Critical Method." London, 1889, 

Unwin, 233-283. 
Stirling, J. H., " Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay. " Edinburgh, 

1868, Edmonton & Douglass, 51-112. 
Fields, J. T. , " Yesterdays with Authors." Boston, 1875, Osgood, v. 

index. 
Bayne, P., "Lessons from My Masters." New York, 1879, Harper, 

203-364. 
Bayne, P., " Essays in Biography and Criticism." Boston, 1857, Gould 

& Lincoln, 50-146. 
Hallam, A. H., "The Lyrical Poems of Tennyson." London, 1893, 

Macmillan, 87-138. 



TENNYSON 765 

Saintsbury, G., " Corrected Impressions." New York, 1895, Dodd, 

Mead & Co., 21-41. 
Devey, J., " Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 275-337. 
Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 

Francis, 273-281. 
Oliphant, Mrs., "The Victorian Age." New York, 1892, Tait, 

203-215. 
Innes, A. O. , "Seers and Singers." London, 1893, Constable, v. 

index. 
Wilde, Lady T. H. S., "Notes on Men," etc. London, 1891, Ward 

& Downey, 286-326. 
Walters, J. C, "In Tennyson Land." London, 1890, Redway, v. 

index. 
Luce, M., "New Studies in Tennyson." London, 1893, J. Baker & 

Son, v. index. 
Wilson, J., "Essays." Edinburgh, 1856, Blackwood (Works), 6: 

109-153. 
Brimley, G., "Cambridge Essays." London, 1855, Parker & Son, 

1: 226-281. 
Waugh, A., "Alfred Tennyson." London, 1893, Heinemann, v. index. 
Tainsh, E. C. , " A Study of the Works of Tennyson." London, 1893, 

Macmillan, v. index. 
Jacobs, J., " Alfred Tennyson, an Appreciation." London, 1892, D. 

Mitt, v. index. 
Dawson, W. J., "The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 

Whittaker, 169-270. 
Walters, J. M., "Tennyson, Poet, Philosopher," etc. London, 1893, 

Kegan Paul & Co., v. index. 
Gilfillan, G., "Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1852, J. Hogg, 2: 

148-160. 
Dowden, E., "Studies in literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 

Co., v. index. 
Sterling, J., " A Review of Tennyson's Poems." London, 1848, Parker 

& Son, 412-463. 
Cheney, J. V., "The Golden Guess." Boston, 1892, Lee & Shepard, 

161-201. 
Howitt, W., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 

Routledge, 691-703. 
Contemporary Review, 62 : 761-785 (S. A. Brooke). 
Critic, 21 : 202-211 (H. Van Dyke and others); 21 : 285-290 (W. J. 

Rolfe and others) ; 10: 1 (Whitman) ; 6 : 50 (W. J. Rolfe). 
Nation, 21 : 60, 61 (C. E. Norton). 



/66 TENNYSON 

New Review \ 7 : 513-532 (E. Gosse). 

Review of Revie?as, 6: 557-570 (W. T. Stead); 6: 553-556 (H. W. 

Mabie). 
Harper's Monthly, 86: 309-312 (A. Fields) ; 68 : 20-41 (A. T. Ritchie). 
Our Day, 11 : 19-36 (W. T. Stead). 

Dial (Chicago), 14: 168, 169 (J. Burroughs) ; 14 : 101, 102 (E. E. Hale). 
Christian Union, 46: 786-970 (H. W. Mabie). 
Nineteenth Century, 35: 761-774 (H. D. Traill) ; 23: 127-129 (A. C. 

Swinburne). 
Poet-Lore, 7: 428-435 <W. J. Rolfe). 
Actional Magazine, 20 : 454, and 14 : 694 (A. Austin). 
Century, 24: 32-37 (J. A. Symonds) ; 23: 539-544, and 20: 502-510 

(H. Van Dyke) ; 15 : 105 (E. Gosse). 
Arena, 9 : 582-592 (W. H. Savage). 

American Catholic Quarterly, 18 : 101-121 (G. P. Lathrop). 
Scribner's Magazine, 6 : 242-248 (H. Van Dyke) ; 8 : 100-105 (E. C. 

Stedman). 
New Princeton Review, 4 : 56-60 (H. Van Dyke). 
Poet-Lore, 3: 10-17 (A. S. Cook). 
Presbyterian Review, 4 : 681-709 (H. Van Dyke). 
Quarterly Review, 106 : 454-485 (W. E. Gladstone). 
Eraser's Magazine, 42 : 245-255 (C. Kingsley). 
Macmillaris Magazine, 27: 143-167 (R. H. Hutton) ; 3: 258-262 

(S. Colvin). 
Appleton's Magazine, 7 : 353-356 (R. H. Stoddard). 
Lnternational Review, 4: 397-418 (B. Taylor). 
Fortnightly Review, 35: 129-153 (A. C. Swinburne). 
Atlantic Monthly, 28: 513-526 (E. C. Stedman). 
Christian Examiner, 33: 237-244 (C. C. Felton). 
Westminster Reviezv, 30 : 402-424 (J. S. Mill). 
Galaxy, 20: 393-402 (H. James, jr.). • 
North American Review, 123 : 216-221 (R. H. Stoddard). 

PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

I. Ideal Portraiture. — "With few exceptions, Tenny- 
son's most poetical types of men and women are not sub- 
stantial beings but beautiful shadows, which, like the phan- 
toms of a stereopticon, dissolve if you examine them too long 
and closely." — E. C. Stedman. 

"What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of 



TENNYSON ^67 

women. . . . Each word of them is like a tint, curiously 
shaded and deepened by the neighboring tint, with all the 
boldness and results of the happiest refinement." — Tai?ie. 

"In one respect I think 'In Memoriam ' surpasses all his 
other works. I mean in the exquisite tone of the pictures it 
contains." — R. H. Hutton. 

" Mr. Tennyson sketches females as never did Sir Thomas 
Lawrence. His portraits are delicate, his likenesses perfect, 
and they have life, character, and individuality." — Professor 
Wilson [Christopher North]. 

" His color and outline in conveying the visual image are 
based on a study of natural fact and a practice in transferring 
it to words which are equally beyond comparison. 
Let any one of a thousand of his descriptions body itself 
before the eye, and the picture will be like the things seen in 
a dream, but firmer and clearer." — George Saintsbury. 

" Observe how the poet gazes face to face upon what he 
portrays, how distinctly he hears every word falling from the 
lips of his characters. He never slurs, he never generalizes. 
He sees the apple-blossom as it sails on the rill ; 
the garden walk is bordered with lilac. He lets you hear the 
words of the simple, kindly rustics, and you see the flowers 
plucked for the wreath, to bind the brow of the little child. 
It [the portrait of Lilian] reminded me of nothing 
I had ever read in poetry or in prose. No strong feeling was 
produced, but I experienced a distinct sensation of pleasant- 
ness, like that of seeing a delicately tinted, quaintly shaped 
china cup ; or finding a curiously-veined, richly-flushed shell 
on the seashore." — Peter Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" At length I saw a lady within call, 

Stiller than chisel'd marble, standing there ; 
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall 
And most divinely fair, 



?6$ TENNYSON 

Her loveliness with shame and with surprise 
Froze my swift speech : she, turning on my face 

The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes, 
Spoke slowly in her place." 

— A Dream of Fair Women, 

'* O sweet pale Margaret, 
O rare pale Margaret, 
What lit your eyes with tearful power, 
Like moonlight on a falling shower ? 
Who lent you, love, your mortal dower 
Of pensive thought and aspect pale, 
Your melancholy sweet and frail 
As perfume of the cuckoo-flower? 
From the westward-winding flood, 
From the evening-lighted wood, 
From all things outward you have won 
A tearful grace, as tho 1 you stood 
Between the rainbow and the sun. 
The very smile before you speak, 
That dimples your transparent cheek, 
Encircles all the heart, and feedeth 
The senses with a still delight 
Of dainty sorrow without sound, 
Like the tender amber round, 
Which the moon around her spreadeth, 
Moving thro' a fleecy night." — Margaret, 

" Mystery of mysteries, 
Faintly smiling Adeline, 
Scarce of earth nor all divine, 
Nor unhappy, nor at rest, 
But beyond expression fair 
With thy floating flaxen hair ; 
Thy rose lips and full blue eyes 
Take the heart from out my breast 
Wherefore those dim looks of thine, 
Shadowy, dreaming Adeline ? " — Adeline. 

2. Picturesqueness. — "Many years ago, as I have 
always remembered, on the appearance of the first four ' Idylls 



TENNYSON 769 

of the King,' one of the greatest painters living pointed out to 
me, with a deep word of rapturous admiration, the wonderful 
breadth of beauty and the perfect force of truth in a single 
verse of Elaine, 

' And white sails flying on the yellow sea.' 

And I know once more the truth of what I had 
never doubted — that the eye and the hand of Mr. Tennyson 
may always be trusted, at once and alike, to see and express 
the truth. Again, 

' Its stormy crests that smote against the skies.' 

Only Victor Hugo himself can make words lighten and thun- 
der like these." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" In the description of pastoral nature in England no one 
has ever surpassed Tennyson. The union of fidelity to nature 
and extreme beauty is scarcely to be found in an equal degree 
in any other writer. ... In Tennyson there is no ten- 
dency to inventiveness in his descriptions of scenery ; he con- 
tents himself with the loveliness of the truth seen through the 
medium of such emotion as belongs to the subject in hand." 
— R. H. Home. 

" An idyllic or picturesque mode of conveying [his] senti- 
ment is the one natural to this poet, if not the only one per- 
mitted by his limitations. In this he surpasses all the poets 
since Theocritus. . . . He is a born observer of physi- 
cal nature, and, whenever he applies an adjective to some 
object or passingly alludes to some phenomenon, which others 
have but noted, is almost infallibly correct. He has the 
unerring first touch which in a single line proves the artist ; 
and it justly has been remarked that there is more true Eng- 
lish landscape in many an isolated stanza of ' In Memoriam ' 
than in the whole of ' The Seasons,' that vaunted descriptive 
poem of a former century. " — E. C. Stedinan. 

" The poetry of Tennyson is replete with magnificent pict- 
ures, flushed with the finest hues of language, and speaking 
49 



770 TENNYSON 

to the eye and the mind with the vividness of reality. We 
not only see the object but feel the associations connected 
with it. His language is penetrated with imagination, and 
the felicity of his epithets especially leaves nothing to desire." 
—E. P. Whipple.' 

" Quiet scenes and soft characters he delights to portray, 
and he portrays them with what the painters call a very soft 
touch." — C. C. Felton. 

" In Mr. Tennyson alone, as we think, the spirit of the 
middle age is perfectly reflected ; its delight, not in the 
'sublime and picturesque,' but in the green leaves and spring 
for their own sake. . . . Give him but such scenery as 
that which he can see in every parish in England, and he will 
find it a fit scene for an ideal myth. . . . It is the 
mystic, after all, who will describe Nature most simply, 
because he sees most in her ; because he is most ready to 
believe that she will reveal to others the same message that 
she has revealed to him. . . . He has become the great- 
est naturalistic poet that England has seen for centuries." — 
Charles Kingsley. 

" The power which makes Tennyson's idylls so unique in 
their beauty is, I think, his wonderful skill in creating a per- 
fectly real and living scene, ... a scene every feature 
of which helps to make the emotion delineated more real and 
vivid. ... Is there, in the whole range of English 
poetry, such a picture of a summer twilight as this : 

' By night we lingered on the lawn,' etc. ? 

I know no descriptive poetry that has the delicate spiritual 
genius of that passage, its sweet mystery, its subdued lustre, 
its living truth, its rapture of peace." — R. H. Hutton. 

" The wonderful succession of cartoons in the ' Palace ' and 
the ' Dream ' exhibit this [combination of music and pictures] 
in his very earliest stage, . . . the power of filling eye 
and ear at once. . . . The attraction of the poem ' In 



TENNYSON 771 

Memoriam ' is . . . , above all, in those unmatched 
landscapes and sketches of which the poet is very prodigal." 
— George Saintsbury. 

" Every line of his poems on Nature is a picture in a new 
style of art, something which had not been done before 
in this fashion and finish ; no, not even by Wordsworth, 
whose love of flowers and birds is less pictorial but more 
instinct with the life of the things he describes. 
Scattered through these poems [1842] are lovely, true, and 
intimate descriptions of Nature in England, done with an art 
which never forgets itself and which seems sometimes too 
elaborate in skill. ' The Gardener's Daughter ' is alive with 
such descriptions. Step by step we move on, the changing 
scene is painted. We walk through the landscape with Ten- 
nyson. ' ' — Stopford Brooke. 

" In the poetic reproduction of visual impressions Tenny- 
son's superiority to all but the very greatest of English poets, 
and his equality with those greatest, is so well established and 
was displayed in such an overwhelming abundance of exam- 
ples, that to quote from but a few of his pages would be to fill 
my own. One could not pass by his image of banished 

fancy : 

' sadder than a single star 
That sets at twilight in a land of reeds,' 

nor a hundred other passages ... in which the poet 
has set before us a picture with a few strokes of his enchanted 
brush, and of each and all of which the same question would 
have to be asked: Where does the commanding merit of 
the material end and the victorious power of art begin?" 
— H. D. Traill. 

11 There is a voluptuous glow in this coloring, warm and 
rich as that of Titian, yet often subdued by the distinct out- 
line and chastened tone of the Roman school; while the 
effect of the whole is elevated by the pure expressiveness of 
Raphael." — H. T. Tuckerman. 



772 TENNYSON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
Now burgeons every maze of quick 
About the flowering squares, and thick 
By ashen roots the violets blow. 

" Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
And, drown'd in yonder living blue, 
The lark becomes a sightless song. 

" Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
And milkier every milky sail 
On winding stream or distant sea." — hi Memoriam,. 

" Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read my thought, 
And on we went ; but ere an hour had pass'd, 
We reached a meadow slanting to the North ; 
Down which a well-worn pathway courted us 
To one green wicket in a private hedge ; 
This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk 
Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned ; 
And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew 
Beyond us as we enter'd in the cool. 
The garden stretches southward. In the midst 
A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. 
The garden-grasses shone, and momently 
The twinkling laurels scatter'd silver lights." 

— The G ardour's Daughter. 

" To-night the winds begin to rise 

And roar from yonder dropping day ; 
The last red leaf is whirled away, 
The rooks are blown about the skies ; 

" The forest cracked, the waters curPd, 
The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
And wildly dashed on tower and tree 
The sunbeam strikes along the world." 

— In Memoriam. 



TENNYSON 773 

3. Exquisite Finish — Smooth Melody. — (t In tech- 
nical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest 
of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed 
him in special instances ; but he is the only one who rarely 
nods, and who always finishes his verse to the extreme. . . . 
Here is the absolute sway of metre, compelling every rhyme 
and measure needful to the thought ; here are sinuous alliter- 
ations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights 
and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, 
or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. . . . The 
blank verse of the ' Morte d' Arthur ' and ' Guinevere ' is the 
perfection of English rhythm ; nor has Tennyson of late years 
uttered a poem without that objective foresight which sees the 
end from the beginning and makes the whole work round and 
perfect. A great artist, a strong and conscientious singer 
holding his imagination quite in his own hand. In Tennyson 
we have the strong repose of art whereof the world is slow to 
tire. . . . The fulness of his art evades the charm of 
spontaneity. . . . Tennyson's original and fastidious 
art is of itself a theme for an essay. The poet who studies it 
may well despair, he can never excel it ; . . . its strength 
is that of perfection ; its weakness, the over-perfection which 
marks a still-life painter. . . . Let me conclude my re- 
marks on his art with a reference to his unfailing taste and 
sense of the fitness of things. This is neatly exemplified in 
the openings, and especially in the closings, of his idylls. The 
artistic excellence of his work has been, from the first, so dis- 
tinguished that lay critics are often at a loss how to estimate this 
poet. Tennyson's art-instincts are always perfect; he does the 
fitting thing, and rarely seeks through eccentric and curious 
movements to attract popular regard. . . . E. A. Poe said 
that ' in perfect sincerity ' he pronounced him ' the noblest 
poet that ever lived.' If he had said the ' noblest artist,' and 
confined this judgment to the lyrists of the English tongue, he 
probably would have made no exaggeration." — E. C. Stedman. 



774 TENNYSON 

" The perception of harmony lies in the very essence of the 
poet's nature, and Mr. Tennyson gives magnificent proofs that 
he is endowed with it." — Wordsworth. 

" But of others [besides Shakespeare] only Spenser had 
hitherto drawn such pictures as those of the ' Palace ' and the 
' Dream/ and Spenser had done them in far less terse fashion 
than Tennyson. Only Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, per- 
haps Beddoes, and a few Elizabethans had poured into the 
veins of language the ineffable musical throb of a score of 
pieces, from ' Claribel ' to ' Break ! Break ! ' and not one of 
them had done it in quite the same way. Only Milton, with 
Thomson as a far distant second, had impressed upon non- 
dramatic blank verse such a swell and surge as that of ' CE- 
none.' And about all these different kinds and others there 
clung and rang a peculiar dreamy slow music, which was heard 
for the first time, and which has never been reproduced — a 
music which in the ' Lotos Eaters,' impossible as it might 
have seemed, adds a new charm after the ' Faerie Queen,' 
after the ' Castle of Indolence,' after the ' Revolt of Islam,' to 
the Spenserian stanza, which makes the stately verse of the 
' Palace ' and the ' Dream ' tremble and cry with melodious 
emotion, and which accomplishes the miracle of the poet's 
own dying swan in a hundred other poems all flooded over 
with eddying song. . . . There is nothing greater about 
it [" In Memoriam "] than the way in which, side by side with 
the prevailing undertone of the stanza, the individual pieces 
vary the music and accompany it, so to speak, in duet with a 
particular melody. It must have been already obvious to 
good ears that no greater master of harmonies — perhaps that 
none so great — had ever lived ; but ' In Memoriam ' set the 
fact finally and irrevocably on record. ... In all other 
respects (except faulty rhymes and occasional accumulations 
of tribrachs) his versification is by far the most perfect of any 
English poet, and results in a harmony positively incompara- 
ble. . . . Take any one of a myriad of lines of Tenny- 



TENNYSON 775 

son, and the mere arrangement of vowels and consonants will 
be a delight to the ear. . . . The same music continued 
to sound — with infinite variety of detail, but with no breach 
of general character — from ' Claribel ' itself to ' Crossing the 
Bar.' ... If you want quick music you must go else- 
where for it or be content with the poet not at his best. But 
in the other mode of linked and long-drawn-out sweetness 
he has hardly any single master and no superior." — George 
Saintsbury. 

" Tennyson possesses a consummate science of rhythm, the 
rarest resources of phrase, taste, grace, distinction, every sort 
of clearness, of research, of refinement. He is the author of 
lyric pieces unequalled in any other language, some of infinite 
delicacy, some of engrossing pathos, some quivering like the 
blast of a mighty horn." — Edmond Scherer. 

"He has performed some miracles of versification, and 
achieved verbal melodies, especially in his ballads, that vin- 
dicate most sweetly our so-called harsh Saxon idiom." — H. 
T. Tuckerman. 

" His song can steal forth, catch by a faint but aerial pre- 
lude the ear, quick to seize on the true music of Olympus, 
and then, with growing and ever-swelling symphonies, still 
more ethereal, still fuller of wonder, love, and charmed woe, 
can travel on amid the listening and spellbound multitude, 
an invisible spirit of melodious power, expanding, soaring 
aloft, sinking deep, coming now as from the distant sea, and 
filling all the summer air, so that it can triumph in its own 
celestial energy. The poet himself would rather not be 
found. . . . The poetry of Tennyson, like that of 
Shakespeare, seems to possess a music of its own. It is evi- 
dently evolved amid the intense play of melodies which are 
as much a part of the individual mind itself as the harmonies 
of nature are a part of nature. Like Shakespeare, Tennyson 
is especially fond of, or rather haunted by, musical refrains, 
the airs that are not invented but struck out ; that cannot be 



TJ6 TENNYSON 

conceived by any labor of thought, but are inspired." — 
William Howitt. 

"Taking the blank verse of the ' Idylls' through and through, 
as a work of art, it is more finished, more expressive, more 
perfectly musical than that of ' Paradise Lost.' . . . He 
has never done anything more pure and perfect than these 
songs from 'The Princess,' clear and simple and musical as 
the chime of silver bells, deep in their power of suggestion ns 
music itself. ' Sweet and Low,' ' Ask me no more,' 

and 'Blow, Bugle, Blow,' will be remembered and sung as 
long as English hearts move to the sweet melody of love and 
utter its secret meanings in the English tongue. 
These lyrics [in " Maud "] are magical, unforgetable ; they 
give an immortal beauty to the poem. . . . It [" De- 
meter "] is an example of that opulent, stately, and musical 
blank verse in which Tennyson is the greatest master since 
Milton died." — Henry van Dyke. 

"Though Tennyson, of course, does not bring to its exe- 
cution a voice of the mighty volume of Milton's, he has not 
only written what is far more perfect as a work of art than 
' Paradise Lost ' . but a poem which shadows forth 

the ideal faith of his own time. Lord Tennyson was an 
artist even before he was a poet ; the eye for 

beauty, grace, and harmony of effect was even more em- 
phatically one of his original gifts than the voice for poetic 
utterance itself. . . . He is one of the greatest masters 
of meter, both simple and sonorous, that the English language 
has ever known." — R. H. Hutton. 

" The art stands up in his poems self-proclaimed and not 
as any mere modification of thought and language but the 
operation of a separate and definite power in the human 
faculties. . . . Whatever he writes is a complete work — 
he holds the unity of it as firmly in his hand as his CEnone's 
Paris holds the apple — and there is nothing broken or in- 
complete in these two full volumes. His few ' fragments ' 



TENNYSON 777 

are entire in themselves and suggest the remainders." — R. H. 
Home. 

"It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with 
language in a way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was 
impossible. ... In those early years he was rather Ben- 
venuto than Michael Angelo, he was more of a jeweller than 
a sculptor ; the phrase was too much for him, the inspiration 
of the incorrect too little. Most interesting is it to the artist 
to remark how impatient of rhyme and how confident in 
rhyme is the whilom poet of ' Oriana.' . . . Now it is the 
art ; it is the greater Shakespeare, the consummate Rembrandt. 
He was an artist in words. . . . From the first, 
Lord Tennyson was an exemplar, and now, in these new utter- 
ances, his supremacy is completely revealed." — IV. E. Henley. 

"Before him no poet dared to use sound or metre in the 
same manner as the architect and sculptor use form, and the 
painter form and color. It was a new delight, both to the 
ear and to the unrecognized sense which stands between sen- 
suousness and pure intelligence. Because, more than most 
poets, he consciously possessed this power, he rapidly learned 
how to use it. His ' Mariana ' is an extraordinary piece of 
minute and equally finished detail. The fastidious care with 
which every image is wrought, every bar of the movement 
adjusted to the next and attuned to the music of all, every 
epithet chosen for point, freshness, and picturesque effect, 
every idea restrained within the limits of close and clear ex- 
pression — these virtues so intimately fused became a sudden 
delight for all lovers of poetry, and for a time affected their 
appreciation of its more unpretending and artless forms." 
— Bayard Taylor. 

(t I know of no blank verse which reminds me of { CEnone ' 
in its general structure, its musical variations of rhythm, and 
its verbal finish; it is simply perfect." — R. H. Stoddard. 

"He was the greatest artist in words that Cambridge has 
ever produced." — Lowell. 



778 TENNYSON 

"There is no finer ear than Tennyson's, nor more com- 
mand of the keys of language. Color, like the dawn, flows 
over the horizon from his pencil in waves so rich that we do 
not miss the central form." — Emerson. 

" On the going out of the imaginative, sentimental, and 
Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All forms and 
ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but puri- 
fied, modulated, set in a splendid style." — Tai?ie. 

" His pictures of rural scenery, among the finest in the 
language, give the inner spirit as well as the outward form of 
the objects, and represent them, also, in their relation to the 
mind which is gazing on them." — E. P. Whipple. 

"So perfect is his rhythmical instinct in general that he 
seems to see with his ear." — E. A. Poe. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Bird's love and bird's song 
Flying here and there, 
Bird's song and bird's love, 
And you with gold for hair ! 
Bird's song and bird's love, 
Passing with the weather, 
Men's song and men's love, 
To love once and forever. 

Men's love and bird's love, 

And women's love and men's ! 

And you my wren with a crown of gold, 

You my queen of the wrens! 

You the queen of the wrens — 

We'll be birds of a feather, 

I'll be the king of the queen of the wrens, 

And all in a nest together." — The Window. 

" There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, 
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, 



TENNYSON 779 

And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
The lawns and meadow- ledges midway down 
Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
In cataract after cataract to the sea. 
Behind the valley topmost Gargarus, 
Stands up and takes the morning : but in front 
The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal, 
Troas and Ilion's column'd citadel, 
The crown of Troas." — CEnone. 

" She is coming, my own, my sweet ; 

Were it ever so airy a tread, 
My heart would hear her and beat, 

Were it earth in an earthy bed ; 
My dust would hear her and beat, 

Had I lain for a century dead ; 
Would start and tremble under her feet 

And blossom in purple and red." — Maud. 

4. Occasional Passion — Vehemence. — " The tour- 
nament scene at the close of the fifth book of ' The Princess ' 
is the most vehement and rapid passage in the whole range of 
Tennyson's poetry. By an approach to the Homeric swift- 
ness, it presents a contrast to the laborious movement of much 
of his narrative verse. . . . He does not, like Browning, 
catch the secret of a master-passion, nor, like the old drama- 
tist, the very life of action." — E. C. Stedman. 

" There was a fire of passion under this smooth surface. A 
genuine poetic temperament never fails in this. It feels too 
acutely to be at peace." — Tainc. 

11 When Tennyson attempts to rise into passionate expres- 
sion, as when Pelleas turns and strikes his curse at Ettarre and 
her harlot towers, he becomes only violent without power. 
That vivid sketch at the beginning, of the wood and of the 
bracken burning around it in the sunlight, cannot keep up its 
speed and fire to the end. Nor is there a single piece of noble 
or passionate writing in the whole of ' The Idylls of the King,' 



780 TENNYSON 

save at the end, where Pelleas breaks into the hall of Arthur 
swordless." — Stopford Brooke. 

" Never since the beginning of all poetry were the twin 
passions of terror and pity more divinely done into deathless 
words or set to more perfect and profound magnificence of 
music." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" ' Fatima ' is full of true and vehement and yet musical 
passion, and suggests the strong flow of Lesbian poetry and 
particularly the well-known fragment of Sappho addressed 
to a woman." — John Sterling. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" O my cousin, shallow hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more 

the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! 

" Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, 
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue ! 

" What is this ? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed 
with wine. 
Go to him : it is thy duty : kiss him : take his hand in thine. 

" It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought ; 
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter 
thought. 

" He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand — 
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my 
hand." — Locksley Hall. 

" Ah — you, that have lived so soft, what should you know of the 
night, 
The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the 
fright ? 

1 have done it, while you were asleep — you were only made for 

the day. 
I have gather'd my baby together — and now you may go your 
way. 



TENNYSON 78 1 

" Do you think I was scared by the bones ? I kiss'd 'em, I 
buried 'em all — 
I can't dig deep, I am old — in the night by the churchyard wall. 
My Willy '11 rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment '11 

sound, 
But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground. 

" And if he be lost — but to save my soul, that is all your desire : 
Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the 

fire? 
I have been with God in the dark — go, go, you may leave me 

alone — 
You never have borne a child — you are just as hard as stone." 

— Rizpah. 

" Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we have made 
them a curse ; 
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own ; 
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse 
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearth- 
stone ? 

" And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, 
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, 
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, 
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 

" When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, 
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, 
Is it peace or war ? better, war ! loud war by land and sea, 
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones." 

— Maud. 

5. Ornateness— Ornamentation of the Common- 
place. — Walter Bagehot, one oftheacutest of modern critics, 
takes Tennyson's " Enoch Arden " as a specimen of ornate art 
as distinguished from pure art [Shelley's] and grotesque art 
[Browning's]. Many of Tennyson's other poems illustrate 
the same quality. 

"The essence of ornate art is ... to accumulate. 



782 TENNYSON 

around the typical object everything which can be said about 
it, every thought that can be associated with it, without im- 
pairing the essence of the delineation. . . .' Nothing is 
described as it is ; everything has about it an air of some- 
thing else. . . . That is to say, that the function of the 
poet is to introduce a ' gay confusion,' a rich medley, which 
does not exist in the actual world. ... As Enoch was 
and must be coarse, in itself the poem must depend for a 
charm on a ' gay confusion,' on a splendid accumulation of 
impossible accessories. . . . Tennyson has painted with 
pure art . the ' Northern Farmer,' and we all know 

what a splendid, what a living thing he has made of it. He 
could, if he only would, have given us the ideal sailor in like 
manner ; the ideal of a natural sailor, we mean — the charac- 
teristic present man as he is and lives. . . . Mr. Tenny- 
son has made it his aim to call off the stress of fancy from real 
life, to occupy it otherwise, to bury it with pretty acces- 
sories. . . . The story of Enoch Arden as he has en- 
hanced and presented it, is a rich and splendid composite of 
imagery and illustration. Yet how simple that story is in 
itself. A sailor who sells fish breaks his leg, gets dismal, 
gives up selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert island, 
stays there some years, on his return finds his wife married to 
a miller, speaks to a landlady on the subject, and dies. Told 
in the pure and simple, unadorned and classical style, this 
story would not have taken three pages. . . . He has 
given us a sailor covered all over with ornament and illustra- 
tion, because he then wanted to describe an unreal type of 
fancied man — not sailors as they are but sailors as they might 
be wished. . . . But nothing in this class of subjects is 
more remarkable than the power he possesses of communicat- 
ing to simple incidents and objects of reality preternatural 
spirit as part of the enchantment of the scene. We are fortu- 
nate in not having to hunt out of past literature an illustration 
of ornate style. . . . Mr. Tennyson has just given one ad- 



TENNYSON 783 

mirable in itself and most characteristic of the defects and merits 
of this style. . . . That art is the appropriate art for an 
unpleasing type. Many of the characters of real life, if they 
were brought distinctly, prominently, and plainly before the 
mind, as they really are, if shown in their inner nature, their 
actual essence, are doubtless very unpleasant. They would be 
horrid to meet and horrid to think of." — Walter Bagehot. 

" It may not be the highest imaginable sign of the poetic 
power or native inspiration that a man should be able to 
grind a beauty out of a deformity or carve a defect into a per- 
fection ; but whatever may be the comparative worth of this 
peculiar faculty, no poet ever had it in a higher degree or 
cultivated it with more patient and strenuous industry than 
Mr. Tennyson." — A. C. Swinburne. 

" For the most part he wrote of the every day loves and 
duties of men and women ; of the primal pains and joys of 
humanity ; of the aspirations and trials which are common to 
all ages and all classes and independent even of the diseases of 
civilization, but he made them new and surprising by the art 
which he added to them, by beauty of thought, tenderness of 
feeling, and exquisiteness of shaping." — Stopford Brooke. 

" He gave them [his poems] too much adornment and 
polishing ; he seemed like an epicurean in style as well as in 
beauty." — Taine. 

" Warmed by his imagination, clad in his felicitous lan- 
guage, or penetrated by his refined sentiment, the hackneyed 
theme or common object are reproduced with a new and en- 
dearing beauty." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" It [" Gareth and Lynette "] is drawn like a series of 
vignettes in interlacing arabesque patterns, . . . remind- 
ing us not only of the detached cleverness with which it 
abounds but also of the effort to make them clearer. 
Without his intention or will, or even expectation, he has 
stimulated into existence a school of what might be called 
decorative poetry." — Bayard Taylor. 



784 TENNYSON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, 
Or often journeying landward ; for in truth 
Enoch's white horse and Enoch's ocean spoil, 
In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, 
Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, 
Not only to the market cross were known, 
But in the leafy lanes behind the down, 
Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp 
And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, 
Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering." 

— Enoch Arden. 

" He spoke, and one among his gentlewomen 
Display'd a splendid silk of foreign loom, 
Where, like a shoaling sea, the lovely blue 
Play'd into green, and thicker down the front 
With jewels ran the sward with drops of dew, 
When all night long a cloud clings to the hill, 
And with the dawn ascending lets the day 
Strike where it clung : so thickly shone the gems." 

— Get ciint and Enid. 

" One look'd all rosetree, and another wore 
A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars : 
This had a rosy sea of gilly flowers 
About it ; this, a milky-way on earth, 
Like visions of the Northern dreamer's heavens, 
A lily-avenue climbing to the doors ; 
One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves, 
A summer burial deep in the hollyhocks." 

— Aylmer's Field. 

6. Moral Elevation — Optimism. — "Without being a 
pedant he is moral ; ... he does not rebel against society 
and life ; he speaks of God and the soul nobly, tenderly, without 
ecclesiastical prejudice. . . . We may listen when we quit 



TENNYSON 785 

him, without being shocked by the contrast, to the grave voice 
of the master of the house, who reads evening prayers before 
the kneeling servants. . . . He has not rudely trenched 
upon the truth and passion. He has risen to the height of 
noble and tender sentiments. He has gleaned from all nature 
and history what was most lofty and amiable." — Taine. 

"Tennyson always speaks from the side of virtue ; and not 
of that new and strange virtue which some of our later poets 
have exalted, and which, when it is stripped of its fine gar- 
ments, turned out to be nothing else than the unrestrained 
indulgence of every natural impulse; but rather of that old- 
fashioned virtue whose laws are ' self- reverence, self-control, 
self-knowledge,' and which finds its highest embodiment in 
the morality of the New Testament. . . . There is a 
spiritual courage in his work, a force of faith which con- 
quers doubt and darkness, a light of inward hope which burns 
dauntless under the shadow of death. Tennyson is the poet 
of faith ; faith as distinguished from cold dogmatism and the 
acceptance of traditional creeds ; faith which does not ignore 
doubt and mystery, but triumphs over them and faces the un- 
known with fearless heart. The poem entitled ' Vastness ' is 
an expression of this faith. . . . Nothing that Tennyson 
has ever written is more beautiful in body and soul than 
' Crossing the Bar.' . . . The effect of Christianity upon 
the poetry of Tennyson may be felt, first of all, in its general 
moral quality. By this it is not meant that he is always preach- 
ing. But at the same time the poet can hardly help revealing, 
more by tone and accent than by definite words, his moral 
sympathies. . . . He is in no sense a rose-water optimist. 
But he is in the truest sense a meliorist. . . . He rests 
his faith on the uplifting power of Christianity. . . . The 
chief peril which threatens the permanence of Christian faith 
and morals is none other than the malaria of modern letters — 
an atmosphere of dull, heavy, faithless materialism. Into this 
narcotic air the poetry of Tennyson blows like a pure wind 
50 



786 TENNYSON 

from a loftier and serener height. . . . Tennyson is es- 
sentially and characteristically a poet with a message. His 
poetry does not merely exist for the sake of its own perfec- 
tion of form. It is something more than the sound of one 
who has a lovely voice and can play skilfully upon an instru- 
ment. It is a poetry with a meaning and a purpose. It is a 
voice that has something to say to us about life. 
When we read them [Tennyson's Poems] we feel our hearts 
uplifted, we feel that, after all, it is worth while to struggle 
toward the light, it is worth while to try to be upright and 
generous and true and loyal and pure, for virtue is victory, 
and goodness is the only fadeless and immortal crown. 
He teaches the gospel of personal love and help, which is 
Christianity. . . . The secret of the poet's influence must 
lie in his spontaneous witness to the reality and supremacy of 
the moral life. His music must thrill us with the conviction 
that the humblest child of man has a duty, an ideal, a destiny. 
He must sing of justice and of love as a sure reward, a stead- 
fast law, the safe port and haven of the soul. . . . There 
is hardly one of Tennyson's poems in which this testimony is 
not clearly and distinctly uttered. The ideal which shines 
through all of his poetry is simply the example of ' Him who 
wrought with human hands, the creeds of creeds,' etc. We 
have turned to the pages of ' In Memoriam ' for that human 
consolation which is only less than divine. I suppose that 
there is only one Book which, for these last forty years, has 
done more to comfort sorrow." — Henry van Dyke. 

"Like Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, though he had 
his moods of sorrow and perplexity, was an optimist, who had 
achieved his right to optimism by the fighting down of despair 
and doubt." — F. W. Farrar. 

"Tennyson, like every true poet, has the strongest feeling 
of the spiritual and almost mystic character of the associations 
attaching to the distant sail which takes the ship on its lonely 
journey to an invisible port, and has more than once used it 



TENNYSON 787 

to lift the mind into the attitude of hope or trust." — J?. H. 
Hutton. 

" Mr. Tennyson's sense of a beneficent unfolding in our 
life of a divine purpose, lifts him through and over the com- 
mon dejections of men." — Edward Dowden. 

"Alfred Tennyson has given many a fatal blow to many 
an old narrow maxim in his poems; he has breathed into his 
later ones the generous and the victorious breath of noble 
philanthropy, the offspring of the great renovator — the Chris- 
tian religion. . . . His moral views, whether directly or 
indirectly conveyed, are healthy, manly, and simple ; and the 
truth and delicacy of his sentiments is attested by the depth 
of pathos which he can wake from the commonest incidents, 
told in the simplest manner, yet deriving all their interest 
from the manner of telling." — W. M. Howitt. 

"I should say he was pre-eminently the prophet of faith. 
His message exhorted all to have faith in man and in God. 
He held that when men believed in man they found ground 
to believe in God." — W. T. Stead. 

" The chastity and moral elevation of this volume [" Idylls 
of the King "], its essential and profound though not didac- 
tic Christianity, are such as cannot be matched throughout 
the circle of English literature in conjunction with an equal 
power." — W. E. Gladstone. 

" He wrote only of that of which he loved to write, that 
which moved him to joy or reverence, that which he thought 
of good report for its loveliness. Even the things he did as 
Poet Laureate, when, if ever, he might have been untrue to 
this, have no tinge of the world about them. . . . When 
the moral conduct of life, when the great sanctions of moral- 
ity are to be represented, Tennyson impassions them and lifts 
them into poetry. This is one of his greatest powers." — 
Stopford Brooke. 

" Hundreds of Tennyson's lines and phrases have become 
fixed in the popular memory; and there is scarcely one of 



788 TENNYSON 

them that is not suggestive or consoling or heartening. He 
delights to sing of honor and chastity and fidelity, and his 
most voluptuous measures celebrate no greater indulgence 
than indolence and the sensuous delight of life. His con- 
scious teaching has always been wholesome and elevating." 
— Bayard Taylor. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I held it truth with him who sings 
To one clear harp in divers tones, 
That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things." 

— In Memoriam. 

lt O lift your natures up : 
Embrace our aims ; work out your freedom. Girls, 
Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed : 
Drink deep, until the habits of the slave ; 
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 
And slander, die. Better not be at all 
Than not be noble." — The Princess. 

" Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete ; 

" That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another's gain. 

" Behold we know not anything ; 

I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off— at last, to all, 
And every winter change to spring." — In Memoriam. 



TENNYSON 789 

7. Biblical Flavor and Diction. — It has been said that 
if every Bible in existence were to be entirely destroyed, the 
cardinal doctrines of Christianity could be determined by the 
biblical references in Shakespeare's plays. The same is true, 
in a great degree of Tennyson. Van Dyke collects from his 
poems no less than three hundred explicit references to the 
Bible, to say nothing of the Christian spirit that pervades 
every page. 

"When we come to speak of the biblical scenes and 
characters to which Tennyson refers, we find so many that we 
have difficulty to choose. ... It would be impossible 
even to enumerate all of Tennyson's allusions to the life of 
Christ, from the visit of the Magi, which appears in the 
1 Morte d' Arthur,' and ' The Holy Grail ' down to the lines in 
1 Balin and Balan ' which tell of ' that same spear wherewith 
the Roman pierced the side of Christ. ' One cause 

of his popularity is because there is so much of the Bible in 
Tennyson. How much, few even of his ardent admirers 
begin to understand. ' And the wicked cease from 

troubling, and the weary are at rest,' is perhaps the best il- 
lustration of Tennyson's felicitous use of words of the Script- 
ure. But there are others, hardly less perfect, in the wonder- 
ful sermon which the rector in ' Aylmer's Field ' delivers 
after the death of Edith and Leolin. It is a mosaic of Bible 
language, most curiously wrought, and fused into one living 
soul by the heart of an intense sorrow. ' The Idylls of the 
King ' are full of delicate and suggestive allusions to the 
Bible." — Henry van Dyke. 

" Not all the musical charm of Tennyson's poetry, nor its 
peerless art, nor its luxuriousness of imagination, nor its 
marvellous pathos has so fully invested it with the quality that 
endures as has his loyalty to the revelation of God found in 
the Holy Scripture and his association of his own song with 
that word which ' liveth and abideth for ever.'" — W. E. 
Gladstone. 



790 TENNYSON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor holds. 
Is He not yonder in the uttermost 
Parts of the morning ? If I flee to these 
Can I go from Him ? and the sea is His, 
The sea is His, he made it." — Enoch Arden. 



a 



Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 

Believing where we cannot prove ; 

"Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
Thou madest life in man and brute ; 
Thou madest Death ; and lo, Thy foot 
Is on the skull which Thou hast made. 

" Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 

Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
He thinks he was not made to die ; 
And Thou hast made him ; Thou art just. 

"And all is well, tho' faith and form 
Be sundered in the night of fear ; 
Well roars the storm to those that hear 
A deeper voice across the storm." — hi Memoriam. 

" And tho' thou numberest with the followers 
Of one who cried, ' Leave all and follow me,' 
Thee therefore with His light about thy feet, 
Thee with His message ringing in thine ears, 
Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from Heaven, 
Born of a village girl, carpenter's son, 
Wonderful, Prince of Peace, The Mighty God, 
Count the more base idolater of the two." 

— Aylmer's Field. 

8. Yearning — Infinite Regret.— This is the key-note 
of Tennyson's masterpiece, and is characteristic of very many 
of his other poems. While he is not a pessimist, and while 
he has not the maddening thirst for the unknown that charac- 



TENNYSON 791 

terizes Shelley, his muse is often pensive, and delights in 
dwelling upon that which is " loved and lost." 

" But then the song [" Break, Break, Break "] returns again 
to the helpless breaking of the sea at the foot of the crags it 
cannot climb, not this time to express the inadequacy of 
human speech to express human yearnings but the defeat of 
those very yearnings themselves. . . . He can conceive 
with the subtlest power the passionate longing for death of a 
mortal endowed with immortality, doomed like Tithonus to 
outlive all life and joy and tremble at the awful prospect of a 
solitary eternity of decay. . . . The ' Passing of Arthur ' 
contains lines resonant with the highest chords of spiritual 
yearning and bewildered trust, lines which echo and re-echo 
in one's imagination like the dying tones of the organ in a 
great cathedral's aisles." — R. H. Hutton. 

" The wisdom, yearnings, aspirations of a noble mind are 
here [in " In Memoriam "] ; the poet's imagination, shut in 
upon itself, strives to irradiate with inward light the mystic 
problems of life." — E. C. Stedman. 

" The note of restrained and tender melancholy has always 
been one of the chief features of Tennyson's poetry. It is not 
obtrusive, but it is pervasive ; it is rarely bitter or cynical, 
but it is always there. It is apparent in the choice of subject 
even in those early poems [" Juvenilia "]. Death and change 
strike the key-note of the volume." — W. J. Dawson. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Dark house, by which once more I stand 
Here in the long unlovely street, 
Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
So quickly, waiting for a hand. 

" A hand that can be clasped no more — 
Behold me, for I cannot sleep ; 
And like a guilty thing I creep 
At earliest morning to the door. 



792 TENNYSON 

" He is not here ; but far away 
The noise of life begins again, 
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 
On the bald street breaks the blank day." 

— In Memoriam. 
" And the stately ships go on 
To their haven under the hill ; 
But oh for the touch of a vanish'd hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

" Break, Break, Break, 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! 

But the tender grace of a day that is dead 

Will never come back to me." 

— To E. L., on his Travels in Greece. 

" Oh that 'twere possible 
After long grief and pain 
To find the arms of my true love 
Round me once again ! 

" — A shadow flits before me, 
Not thou, but like to thee : 
Ah Christ, that it were possible 
For one short hour to see 
The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
What and where they be." — Maud. 

9. Dramatic Power. — " I would not be surprised to 
hear that any true critic would rate ' Queen Mary,' whether 
in dramatic force or in general power, below ' Henry VIII.,' 
but my own impression is that it is a decidedly finer work of 
dramatic art. . . . The great poet of the nineteenth cen- 
tury will certainly never be regarded as a great dramatist. 
But that, being the great lyric poet he is, he should be so 
great even as he is in drama, will always be his singular dis- 
tinction." — R. H. Button, 

" His greatest achievement still is that noblest of modern 
episodes, the canto entitled ' Guinevere,' surcharged with 



TENNYSON 793 

tragic pathos and high dramatic power. He never has so 
reached the passio vera of the early dramatists as in this im- 
posing scene." — E. C. Stedman. 

11 It cannot, indeed, be doubted that if Tennyson had 
devoted himself to the dramatic form from the first he might 
have been original and masterly in that as he has been in 
lyrism. All along he has given striking proofs of a power 
to seize and portray character in phases and wholes." — J. M. 
Robertson. 

" His dramatic experiments, like ' Queen Mary,' are not, 
on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny 
dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon the one 
hand 'Guinevere' and the 'Passing of Arthur,' and on the 
other the homely dialectic monologue of the ' Northern 
Farmer.' . . . The interview between Arthur and his 
fallen queen is marked by a moral sublimity and a tragic in- 
tensity which move the soul as nobly as any scene in modern 
literature." — Henry A. Beers. 

" Tennyson lacks the dramatic quality, but he possesses a 
faculty which is sometimes mistaken for it — the representative 
faculty. It is present in the ' Northern Farmer,' < The North- 
ern Cobbler,' etc., which may be clever character studies, but 
which certainly are not dramatic poems." — R. H. Stoddard. 

" With a force of dramatic sympathy which it would be 
quite reasonable to compare with Shakespeare's, Tennyson 
enters into the person of the girl who is about to die, Iphi- 
genia, and enables the imaginative reader to see through her 
eyes, to gasp and sigh with her in her swooning anguish. All 
is intensely real." — Peter Bayne. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : 
' Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, 
Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! 
Authority forgets a dying king, 



794 TENNYSON 

Laid widow'd of the power in his eye 

That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art ; 

For thou, the latest left of all my knights, 

In whom should meet the offices of all, 

Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt ; 

Either from lust of gold, or like a girl 

Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. 

Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, 

And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : 

But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, 

I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' " 

— The Passing of Arthur, 

'* But how to take last leave of all I loved ? 

golden hair, with which I used to play 
Not knowing ! O imperial moulded form, 
And beauty such as never woman wore, 
Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee — 

1 cannot touch thy lips : they are not mine, 

But Lancelot's : nay, they never were the King's. 

I cannot take thy hand ; that too is flesh, 

As in the flesh thou hast sinn'd ; and mine own flesh, 

Here looking down on thine polluted, cries, 

' I loathe thee.'" — Guinevere. 

" Anything fallen again ? nay — what was there left to fall ? 
I have taken them home, I have numbered the bones, I have 

hidden them all. 
What am I saying ? and what are you ? do you come as a spy ? 
Falls ? what falls ? who knows ? As the tree falls so must it lie. 

11 Who let her in ? how long has she been ? you — what have you 

heard ? 
Why did you sit so quiet ? you never have spoken a word. 
Oh, — to pray with me — yes — a lady — none of their spies — 
But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my 

eyes." — Rizpah. 

io. Microscopic Observation— Peculiar Attitude 
toward Nature — " Not less remarkable is the identity of 



TENNYSON 795 

spirit in Tennyson and Milton in their delicate yet wholesome 
sympathy with Nature, their perception of the relation of 
her woods and aspects to the human heart. . . . They 
[" Idylls "] are full of little pictures which show that Tennyson 
has studied nature at first hand and that he understands how 
to catch and reproduce the most fleeting and delicate expres- 
sions of her face. . . . Most wonderful of all is his knowl- 
edge of the sea and his power to describe it. He has looked 
at it from every standpoint and caught every phase of its 
changing aspect. . . . He has caught more [than Words- 
worth] of the throbbing and passionate and joyous voices of 
the world ; he has not entered so deeply into the silence and 
solemnity of guardian mountains and sleeping lakes and broad 
bare skies ; but he has felt more keenly the thrills and flushes 
of Nature — the strange, sudden, perplexed, triumphant im- 
pulses of that eager seeking and tremulous welcoming of love 
which flows like life-blood through all animate things. . . . 
While the Lady of Shalott dwells in her pure seclusion, the 
sun shines, the lily blossoms on the river's breast, and the blue 
sky is unclouded ; but when she passes the fatal line, and the 
curse has fallen on her, then 

1 In the stormy east wind straining, 
The pale yellow woods are waning, 
The broad stream in his banks complaining, 
Heavily the low sky raining. 
Over tower'd Camelot.' 

Mr. Ruskin says that this is ' pathetic fallacy ; ' for, as a mat- 
ter of fact, the clouds do not weep, nor do the rivers com- 
plain, and he maintains that to speak of them as if they did 
these things is to speak with a certain degree of falsehood which 
is unworthy of the highest kind of art. But Mr. Ruskin may 
say what he pleases about Milton and Tennyson without much 
likelihood of persuading any sane person that their poetry is 
not profoundly true to Nature — and most true precisely in its 



796 TENNYSON 

recognition of her power to echo and reflect the feelings of 
man." — Henry van Dyke. 

" In describing scenery, his microscopic eye and marvel- 
lously delicate ear are exercised to the utmost in detecting the 
minutest relations and most evanescent melodies of the objects 
before him, in order that his representation shall include every- 
thing which is important to their full perception. His pict- 
ures of English rural scenery give the inner spirit as well as 
the outward form of the objects, and represent them, also, in 
their relation to the mind which is gazing on them. The pict- 
ure in his mind is spread out before his detecting and dissect- 
ing intellect, to be transformed to words only when it can be 
done with the most refined exactness, both as regards color 
and form and melody." — E. P. Whipple. 

" He has a striking microscopic faculty, on which his poetic 
imagination works. No poet has so many and such accurate 
references to the vegetable world, and yet at the same time 
references so thoroughly poetic. . . . He never tired of 
reflecting in his poetry the physiology of flowers and trees and 
buds. . . . His insight into them does not come through 
his sympathy with active life, as Shakespeare's did : it comes 
of the careful scrutinizing eye of the naturalist feeding the 
brooding heart of a poet. It is the scenery of the mill, the 
garden, the chase, the down, the rich pastures, the harvest 
fields, the palace pleasure grounds, the Lord of Burleigh's fair 
domains. . . . There is always complexity in the beauty 
which fascinates Lord Tennyson most. . . . Note espe- 
cially the realism (which Tennyson never fails to show) in 
explanation of especial fragrance in the air. . . . Lord 
Tennyson has wonderful power of putting nature under con- 
tribution to help him in delineating moods of feeling. . . . 
No poet has ever had a greater mastery than Tennyson over 
the power of real things." — R. H. Hutton. 

" One especially rich source, both for imagery and idea, is 
to be found in the ' language of flowers ' made use of by the 



TENNYSON 797 

poet. Throughout his landscape poems the rich botany of the 
poet's language gives a vividness to the poetry much needed 
in the realms of abstract thought. . . . Notice, too, the 
accurate observation involved in 'crimson fringes' of daisy, 
' earlier and later primrose.' " — John Sterling. 

" In ' Mariana ' the poet showed an art then peculiar, but 
since grown familiar, of heightening the central feeling by 
landscape accessories. The level waste, the stagnant sluices, 
the neglected garden, the wind in the single poplar, re-en- 
force, by their monotonous sympathy, the loneliness, the 
hopeless waiting and weariness of life in the one human figure 
of the poem." — Henry A. Beers. 

11 A series of physical descriptions constantly makes us sen- 
sible of the actual world, while inwrought with this the feel- 
ing of the piece, whether love or sorrow or remorse, is kept 
vividly before us in all its abstract significance." — H. T. 
Tuckerman. 

"Mr. Tennyson, while fully adopting Wordsworth's prin- 
ciple from the beginning, seemed by instinctive taste to have 
escaped the snares which proved so subtle for Keats and for 
Wordsworth. . . . Above all, . . . there was a 
hushed and reverent awe, a sense of the mystery, the infini- 
tude, the awfulness, as well as of the mere beauty of wayside 
things, which invested these poems as a whole with a peculiar 
richness, depth, and majesty of tone, beside which both Keats's 
and Wordsworth's methods of handling pastoral subjects looked 
like the coloring of Giulio Romano beside Titian. 
It is just because Mr. Tennyson is, far more than Wordsworth, 
mystical, and what an ignorant and money-getting generation, 
idolatrous of mere sensuous activity, calls 'dreamy,' that he 
has become the greatest naturalistic poet which England has 
seen for several centuries." — Charles Kingsley. 



ygS TENNYSON 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" With blackest moss the flower-pots 

Were thickly crusted, one and all : 
The rusted nails fell from the knots 

That held the pear to the gable-wall. 
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange ; 

Unlifted was the clinking latch ; 

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
Upon the lonely moated grange. 

She only said, ' My life is dreary, 
He cometh not,' she said ; 

She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, 
I would that I were dead ! ' " — Mariana. 

" Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
Little breezes dusk and shiver 
Thro' the wave that runs forever 
By the island in the river 

Flowing down to Camelot. 
Four gray walls and four gray towers 
Overlook a space of flowers, 
And the silent isle embowers 

The Lady of Shalott." 

— The Lady of Shalott. 

" The pale blood of the wizard at her touch 
Took gayer colors, like an opal warm'd. 
She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales : 
She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept 
Of petulancy ; she called him lord and liege, 
Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve, 
Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love 
Of her whole life ; and ever overhead 
Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch 
Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain 
Above them ; and in the change of glare and gloom 
Her eyes and neck glittering went and came ; 
Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent, 
Moaning and calling out of other lands, 



TENNYSON 799 

Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more 

To peace ; and what should not have been had been ; 

For Merlin, overtalked and overworn, 

Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept." 

— Merlin and Vivian. 

II. Repose — Peacefulness. — " In Tennyson we have 
the strong repose of art, whereof — as the perfection of nature 
— the world is slow to tire. . . . His stream is sweet, 
assured, strong ; but how seldom the abrupt bend, the plunge 
of the cataract, the thunder of the spray ! . . . The 
strain of ' In Memoriam ' is ever calm, even in rehearsing a 
by-gone violence of emotion along its passage from woe to 
desolation and anon, by tranquil stages, to reverence, thought, 
aspiration, endurance, hope. On sea and shore the elements 
are calm ; even the wild winds and snows of winter are 
brought in hand and made subservient, as the bells ring out 
the dying year, to the new birth of Nature and the sure pur- 
pose of eternal God." — E. C. Stedman. 

'* I know no descriptive poetry that has the delicate spirit- 
ual genius of that passage [from " In Memoriam "], its sweet 
mystery, its subdued lustre, its living truth, its rapture of 
peace." — R. H. Hutton. 

" Some passages of the ' Lotos Eaters ' give a sensation of 
luxurious repose far more conspicuously than the ' Castle of 
Indolence.'" — H. T. Tuckernian. 

"There is nothing stirring, nothing restless, nothing am- 
bitious in its [Tennyson's art] tone; it has no freaks and 
eccentricities by which it seeks to strike the public notice. 
But the very nature of Tennyson's genius is to be 
contented with what is. It is happy in itself as the bird upon 
the bough. It is rolled into itself, living and rejoicing in its 
own being and blessedness." — W. M. Howitt. 

"Disorder of thought, of feeling, and of will is, with Mr. 
Tennyson, the evil of evils, the pain of pains. . . . Let 
us start by saying that Mr. Tennyson has a strong dignity 



800 TENiNYSON 

and efficiency of law — of law understood in its widest mean- 
ing. Energy nobly controlled, an ordered activity, delight 
his imagination. Violence, extravagance, immoderate force, 
the swerving from appointed ends, revolt — these are with 
Mr. Tennyson the supreme manifestations of evil. 
Although we find the idea of God entering largely into his 
poems, there is little recognition of special contact of the soul 
with the Divine Being in any supernatural way of quiet or 
ecstasy. There is, on the contrary, a disposition to rest 
in the orderly manifestation of God as the supreme Law- 
Giver, and even to identify him with his presentation of him- 
self in the physical and moral order of the universe. Mr. 
Tennyson finds law present throughout all nature, but there 
is no part of nature in which he dwells with so much satisfac- 
tion upon its presence as in human society. . . . His 
imagination is forever haunted by ' the vision of the world 
and all the wonder that would be.' But the hopes and aspira- 
tions of Mr. -Tennyson are not those of the radical or move- 
ment character. He is in all his poems conservative as well 
as liberal. . . . Mr. Tennyson's political doctrine is in 
entire agreement with his ideal of human character. As the 
exemplar of all nations is the one in which highest wisdom is 
united with complete self-government, so the ideal man is he 
whose life is led to sovereign power by self-knowledge result- 
ing in self-control and self-control growing perfect in self- 
reverence. ... In both [the poem to the Prince Consort 
and that to the Duke of Wellington] the characters are drawn 
with fine discrimination, but in both the crowning virtue of 
the dead is declared to have been the virtue of obedience, 
that of self-subjugation to the law of duty. . . . Self- 
reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, the recognition of a 
divine order and of one's place in that order, faithful adhe- 
sion to the law of one's highest life — these are the elements 
from which is formed the human character." — Edward 
Dowden. 



TENNYSON 8oi 

" Some of the blank verse poems— a style almost unat- 
tempted in the earlier series — have a quiet completeness and 
depth, a sweetness arising from the happy balance of thought, 
feeling, and expression — that ranks them among the riches of 
our recent literature. . . . There is in this work [" Ulys- 
ses "] a delightful epic tone and a clear unimpassioned wis- 
dom, quietly carving its sage words and graceful figures on 
pale but lasting marble. . . . The unrhymed verse has 
a quiet fulness of sound and all the delineation of a clear yet 
rich completeness of truth that render the little work [" The 
Gardener's Daughter"], though far from the loftiest, yet one 
of the most delightful we know." — John Sterling. 

" In the poetry of Tennyson, to use an image furnished by 
itself, all those thunder-clouds of doubt, fear, and ambition, 
which had long been roofing the European world, were still 
visible, only they floated in an evening atmosphere and had 
grown golden all about the sky. . . . That enveloping 
calm, which Tennyson knows so well how to combine with 
power of expression." — Peter Bayne. 

" In this passage [the description of a pathway in " The 
Gardener's Daughter"] we have a not inapt illustration of 
the strongest tendency of Tennyson's mind. It is from such 
a neat and quiet bower of peace that he looks out upon the 
world. " — W. J. Dawson. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Calm is the morn without a sound, 
Calm as to suit a greater grief, 
And only thro' the faded leaf, 
The chestnut pattering to the ground. 

" Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
And on these dews that drench the furze, 
And all the silvery gossamers 
That twinkle into green and gold. 
5i 






802 TENNYSON 

" Calm and still light on yon great plain 

That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
To mingle with the bounding main : 

" Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 
These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
And in my heart, if calm at all, 
If any calm, a calm despair." — In Memoriam, 

11 Live — yet live — 
Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all 
Life needs for life is possible to will — 
Live happy ; tend thy flowers ; be tended by 
My blessing : Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts 
Too sadly for thy peace, remand it thou 
For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold, 
If not to be forgotten, not at once — 
Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams, 
Oh might it come like one that looks content." 

— Love and Duty, 

" One walk'd between his wife and child, 
With measured footfall firm and mild, 
And now and then he gravely smiled. 

" The prudent partner of his blood 
Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good, 
Wearing the rose of womanhood. 

" And in their double love secure, 
The little maiden walked demure, 
Pacing with downward eyelids pure. 

" These three made unity so sweet, 
My frozen heart began to beat, 
Remembering its ancient heat. 

" I blest them, and they wander'd on : 
I spoke, but answer came there none : 
The dull and bitter voice was gone. 



TENNYSON 803 

" A second voice was at mine ear, 
A little whisper silver-clear, 
A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.' 

" As from some blissful neighborhood, 
A notice faintly understood, 
' I see the end, and know the good.' " 

— The Two Voices. 

12. Tenderness — Pathos. — " The tenderness of Ten- 
nyson is one of his remarkable qualities — not so much in it- 
self, for other poets have been more tender — but in combina- 
tion with his rough powers. We are not surprised that his 
rugged strength is capable of the mighty and tragic tenderness 
of 'Rizpah,' but we could not think at first that he could feel 
and realize the exquisite tenderness of ' Elaine.' ... It 
is a wonderful thing to have so wide a tenderness, and only a 
great poet can possess it and use it well." — Stopfo7-d Brooke. 

"Take the stanzas entitled 'A Farewell,' the pathos of 
which, if it be difficult to account for, it is not the less im- 
possible to resist. A simple touch this — a mere ejaculation of 
tender emotion, which seems as if it might have escaped from 
anybody, yet it shows how truly the poet's feeling vibrates 
in sympathy with nature ; otherwise how should so simple a 
tone out of the heart awaken such an echo in our own?" 
— J. R. Sp editing. 

"Tennyson is a great master of pathos; knows the very 
tones that go to the heart ; can arrest every one of those looks 
of upbraiding or appeal by which human woe brings the tear 
into the human eye. . . . The pathos is deep \ but it is 
the majesty, not the prostration of grief." — Peter Bay?ie. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, 
I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, 
Come, for you left me, taking no farewell, 
Hither, to take my last farewell of you. 



804 TENNYSON 

I loved you, and my love had no return, 

And therefore my true love has been my death. 

And therefore to my Lady Guinevere, 

And to all other ladies, I make moan. 

Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. 

Pray for my soul, thou too, Sir Lancelot, 

For thou art a knight peerless." 

— Lancelot and Elaine. 

" Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence ? 
O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou 
That didst uphold me on my lonely isle, 
Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness 
A little longer ! aid me, give me strength 
Not to tell her, never to let her know. 
Help me not to break in upon her peace. 
My children too ! must I not speak to these? 
They know me not. I should betray myself. 
Never : No father's kiss for me — the girl, 
So like her mother, and the boy, my son." 

— Enoch Arden. 

" ' But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you 
Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight 
His father's memory ; and take Dora back, 
And let all this be as it was before.' 
So Mary said, and Dora hid her face 
By Mary. There was silence in the room ; 
And all at once the old man burst in sobs : — 
1 I have been to blame — to blame. 
I have killed my son. 

I have kill'd him — but I loved him — my dear son. 
May God forgive me ! — I have been to blame. 
Kiss me, my children.' 

Then they clung about 
The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times. 
And all the man was broken with remorse ; 
And all his love came back a hundredfold ; 
And for three hours he sobb'd o'er William's child." 

— Dora* 



HOLMES, 1809-1894 

Biographical Outline. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, born 
August 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Mass. ; father a graduate 
of Yale College, a writer of some local reputation, a rigid 
Calvinist, and during most of his life pastor of the First Con- 
gregational Church of Cambridge ; his mother, whom the 
poet more resembled, was descended from an old Dutch 
family of Albany, N. Y., by the name of Wendell; Holmes 
begins his education at a dame's school; at fifteen he is in 
school at Cambridgeport, and goes thence, in 1824, to Phillips 
Academy, at Andover ; the boy early manifests a reaction 
against the narrow tenets of Calvinism, and is greatly influ- 
enced by the atmosphere of Unitarianism that pervaded Cam- 
bridge during his youth ; Holmes was not precocious as a 
verse-maker ; the reading that most influenced his poetic taste 
in early days was Gray's ''Elegy" and Pope's "Homer;" 
in the summer of 1825 he enters Harvard College, thus 
becoming a member of the famous class of 1829; while in 
college Holmes writes to his Andover chum and life-long 
friend, Phineas Barnes, "I smoke most devoutly and sing most 
unmusically; have written poetry for the Annual, and have 
seen my literary bantlings smothered in green silk and repos- 
ing in the drawing-room : " after graduating from Harvard, 
in 1829, he enters the Harvard Law School at Cambridge, 
and devotes himself to law for one year, but finds it, as he 
says, "very cold and cheerless about the threshold;" in 
1830 he writes to Barnes, "I have been writing poetry like 
a madman ; " the reference is to his contributions to the 
Collegian, a paper then published by the undergraduates of 
Harvard; these contributions include "The Spectre Pig," 

805 



806 HOLMES 

"The Mysterious Visitor," and many other verses which 
Holmes refused afterward to republish ; during his year in the 
law school he also writes his since widely known poem " Old 
Ironsides;" the old frigate Constitution, then lying in the 
Navy Yard in Charlestown, had been condemned by the Navy 
Department to be destroyed ; on reading of the proposed 
action, Holmes seized a scrap of paper, wrote rapidly with a 
pencil his poetical protest, and sent it to the Daily Advertiser ; 
the poem was reprinted all through the United States, and 
was scattered about Washington as a handbill, with the result 
that the old war-ship was not destroyed ; in the autumn of 
1830 he gives up the law and enters a private medical school 
in Boston ; in 1831 he writes : "I have been a medical stu- 
dent for more than six months ; I know I might have made 
an indifferent lawyer — I think I may make a tolerable physi- 
cian — I did not like the one and I do like the other ; " soon 
after their graduation the Class of '29 began to have annual 
dinners in Boston, and Holmes accordingly began his long 
series of occasional poems in honor of these events ; after two 
courses of medical lectures in Boston he sails for Paris late in 
March, 1833, to spend two years there in completing his 
medical education ; among his travelling companions during 
the long voyage were George William Curtis and "Tom" 
Appleton. 

Holmes's sojourn in Paris was made possible through funds 
inherited by his mother and through the rigid economy of 
both his parents ; after visiting Salisbury, Stonehenge, and 
Havre, he reaches Paris, and settles there at 55 Rue M. le 
Prince; while in Paris he works industriously from 7.30 a.m. 
till 5 p.m., and then dines at a cafe with a jolly group of fel- 
low-students — all Bostonians ; of this Parisian experience he 
wrote later, "I saw but little outside hospital and lecture- 
rooms;" in the early summer of 1834, after the medical 
lectures were over, Holmes, with several companions, makes 
a tour through the Low Countries and back to Paris through 



HOLMES 807 

England and Scotland, visiting the Burns and Scott districts 
and the Lake country ; after studying severely during the 
winter of 1834-35, meantime subject to immediate recall 
because of the war between France and America and the 
strained financial condition of his parents, he ships to Boston 
"two skeletons and some skulls," and starts, in July, 1834, 
on a long hoped-for tour through Switzerland and Italy, 
tramping from Geneva to Milan, visiting Venice, Bologna, 
and Rome; he returns to America in the following autumn, 
reaching New York December 14, 1835, after a voyage of 
forty -three days ; he had gained much medical knowledge 
and an excellent command of the French tongue ; while in 
Paris he wrote no poems ; his expenses there were about 
$1,200 a year, including books, instruments, and private in- 
struction; he declared in after-life, "I never risked a franc 
on any game in Europe," and his biographer and cousin 
maintains that the young physician " brought back no skeleton 
except those in his trunks;" in October, 1834, when asked 
to contribute to the New England Magazine, he writes: " I 
shall say No, though Nemesis and Plutus come hand in hand 
to tear me, the Cincinnatus of science, from the plough-tail 
she has summoned me to follow." 

Holmes establishes himself in an office in Boston early in 
1836, after receiving the degree of M.D. from Harvard, and 
intimates to the public that " small favors (or fevers) will be 
thankfully received," but his practice at first was very small, 
and never became more than fair ; his reputation as a wit and 
a poet was doubtless a hindrance to his professional success ; 
late in 1836 he publishes his first volume of poems, including 
" Old Ironsides," " The Last Leaf," and the Phi Beta Kappa 
poem that he had read at Harvard during the previous sum- 
mer ; he occupies his leisure by acting for three seasons as 
one of the physicians of the Massachusetts General Hospital ; 
in 1838 he is "mightily pleased" on receiving an appoint- 
ment as Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College — a posi- 



So8 HOLMES 

tion that required his residence at Hanover only during the 
months of August, September, and October ; he holds this 
professorship for the years 1839 and 1840 ; meantime he 
competes successfully for the Boylston medical prize, his dis- 
sertation in the competition receiving almost unanimously the 
highest marks by the judges, although his competitors were 
physicians of large experience from various States of the 
Union ; he also won two other medical prizes about this 
time ; these prize dissertations were the result of enormous 
labor and most extensive investigation by Dr. Holmes, and 
the one on "Intermittent Fever in New England" is still 
authoritative for the period which it covers ; later these and 
other dissertations were gathered into a volume published 
under the title " Medical Essays " — a book that contains some 
of Holmes's brightest wit, especially in his satirical essays 
on homoeopathy; his essay on "Contagiousness of Puerperal 
Fever," published in 1843, established his reputation as that 
of a physician who had made an original and very valuable 
contribution to medical science; at first his theory was bit- 
terly opposed by the most eminent professors of obstetrics, 
and Holmes was subjected to violent personal abuse, but his 
logic triumphed, and his theory is now generally accepted by 
medical scholars; the essay was republished in 1855. 

On June 15, 1840, he was married to Amelia Lee Jackson, 
daughter of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts 
and a niece of Holmes's friend and former preceptor ; of the 
three children of this marriage one became a Lieutenant 
Colonel in the Civil War and afterward a Judge of the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts ; the other two died in com- 
paratively early life, several years before their father; in 1847 
Holmes is made Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physi- 
ology in the Medical School of Harvard College — a position 
that he held till 187 1, when a separate Professorship of Physi- 
ology was established, he still retaining the work in Anatomy ; 
during these twenty-four years he taught also microscopy and 



HOLMES 809 

psychology, so that he said he occupied " not a professor's 
chair but a whole settee." 

Holmes was most successful in his professorship at Harvard, 
and took great pride in his work, though the salary was not 
large; his lecture was always placed latest in the afternoon, 
because he alone could hold the interest of the wearied stu- 
dents ; he was one of the first American physicians to use the 
microscope, and invented the hand stereoscope, now so com- 
mon, although he never patented it ; he also made a rare col- 
lection of old medical books, which he loved as Lamb loved 
his old dramatists ; he was Dean of the Medical School from 
1847 to 1853, and continued his professorship of Anatomy 
till 1882 ; soon after his marriage he began to follow the then 
very common practice of lecturing in various towns and vil- 
lages of New England, and became very popular in this field ; 
his uniform terms were " fifteen dollars and expenses;" it was 
work that he disliked, but it was welcome as a means of eking 
out his then scanty income ; among others, he gave twelve 
lectures in 1852 before the Lowell Institute on the English 
poets, and closed each lecture with verses of his own ; during 
his country lecture-tours he became subject to asthma, a 
malady that seriously interfered with his work and his plans 
for travel during the rest of his life ; he dared not trust him- 
self away from home for fear of being quite overcome by 
asthma; his first residence after marriage was at 8 Mont- 
gomery Place, afterward Bosworth Street ; thence he removed 
in 1858 to Charles Street, near the Cambridge bridge, where 
he remained till 1870, when he removed to the home in 
Beacon Street where he finished his days; from 1849 to 1856 
he passed his summers at Pittsfield on a farm of two hundred 
and eighty acres on the Lenox road, an estate inherited from 
his maternal greatgrandfather and known in history as " Canoe 
Meadows. ' ' 

When the Atlantic Monthly was established, in 1857, 
Lowell accepted the editorship only on the condition that 



SlO HOLMES 

Holmes should be " the first contributor engaged ; " Holmes 
was then fifty years of age, and had little more than a local 
reputation as a writer; but, as he said afterward, "Lowell 
woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half 
slumbering, to call me to active service;" Holmes named 
the new periodical, and his cheery contributions over the 
pseudonym of the " Autocrat" really saved the undertaking 
from financial ruin during the terrible financial panic of 1857; 
he had first used the pseudonym in the New England Maga- 
zine, twenty -five years before ; on entering again the literary 
field, Holmes specifically declined to become either a critic or 
a reviewer, declaring that " when Nature manufactured her 
authors she made the critics out of the chips that were left ; " 
he longs to travel, and envies the European experiences of 
his friends Lowell and Motley, but his asthma keeps him, as 
he says, " a kind of prisoner for life in Boston ; " Fields, his 
publisher, was for many years Holmes's next-door neighbor ; 
his best and latest poems were first published in connection 
with the "Autocrat" series, being scattered through the 
prose articles ; " The Chambered Nautilus " appeared in the 
fourth of the " Breakfast -Table " series, and was at once pro- 
nounced by Whittier to be " booked for immortality ; " dur- 
ing his later years Holmes often read his poems in public 
with great success, generally in behalf of philanthropic enter- 
prises ; soon after the establishment of the Atlantic Monthly, 
he took a prominent part in forming the famous Saturday 
Club, which for many years dined at " Parker's " on the last 
Saturday of each month, and included, besides Holmes, 
Emerson, Motley, Hawthorne, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, 
Whipple, Prescott, Felton, Howells, Norton, Agassiz, Park- 
man, Sumner, and several other prominent contributors to 
the Atlantic ; next to his own family, Holmes loved the club 
— an attitude due in part, doubtless, to his forced provincial- 
ism; in December, 1858, he visited Irving at "Sunnyside." 
After contributing "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" 



HOLMES 8 1 I 

to the Atlantic, in twelve monthly instalments, during 1858, 
he followed it the next year with the series of equal length' 
entitled "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table;" fourteen 
years then passed before he completed the series with " The 
Poet at the Breakfast-Table," in 1873 ; meantime he had 
written "Elsie Venner," first published in 1859 under the 
title of "The Parson's Love Story;" although this was se- 
verely criticised as "a medicated novel," etc., etc., Holmes 
declared that it was really conceived " in the fear of God and 
in the love of man ; " the story really treats not so much of 
a question of physiology as of the profoundest problem in 
theology; of his two other stories, "The Guardian Angel " 
appeared in 1867, and "A Mortal Antipathy" in 1885. 

During the war period Holmes held himself aloof from all 
anti-slavery and other political organizations, and distrusted 
the abolition movement ; he had an utter distaste for meet- 
ings and committee work ; although he wrote several vigor- 
ous war poems, his only public activity during this period was 
in the form of an oration delivered in Boston July 4, 1863 ; 
this oration was very widely applauded, and was afterward 
published in the volume entitled " Pages from an Old 
Volume of Life; " early in 1864 Holmes was one of the 
illustrious company that followed Hawthorne's body to the 
grave ; during his later years he was continually appealed to 
for literary advice, and was often, as he said, "struggling in a 
quagmire of unanswered letters and unthanked-for books; " 
on December 3, 1879, he was honored with a breakfast by the 
publishers of the Atlantic as that contributor who, more than 
any other, had caused the prosperity of the magazine; at this 
function all the prominent living writers of America were 
either present in person or sent laudatory letters ; on Novem- 
ber 28, 1882, he resigned his professorship in the Harvard 
Medical School, after having lectured there thirty-five years, 
and was made Professor Emeritus; at the same time he en- 
tered into a contract with his publishers for regular literary 



8l2 HOLMES 

work; on April 12, 1883, the medical profession of the city 
of New York gave a dinner in honor of Holmes, at which 
William M. Evarts, George William Curtis, and Whitelaw 
Reid took a prominent part ; after the death of Motley, one 
of Holmes's dearest personal friends, in May, 1877, he wrote 
a brief memoir for the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
which he afterward expanded into a small volume — a tribute 
rather than a biography — published in 1878; Holmes also 
wrote a "Life" of Emerson for the "American Men of 
Letters " series, published in 1884, but this, although the 
result of profound study of and about Emerson, was also a 
tribute or a memoir rather than a biography. 

On April 29, 1886, Holmes started for Europe in company 
with his daughter, Mrs. Sargent ; they landed at Liverpool 
May 9th, after a voyage in which the Doctor suffered severe- 
ly from his old enemy, the asthma; they were received with 
marked social attention at Liverpool, and went thence to 
London, stopping at Chester; from the beginning it was a 
triumphal tour, as special railway carriages, flowers, and all 
sorts of attentions were awaiting them everywhere; they 
established themselves at 17 Dover Street, in London, and 
were so flooded with social invitations that they were required 
to keep a secretary to acknowledge them ; as Holmes writes, 
" Breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions with spread 
tables, two, three, four deep of an evening, with receiving 
company at our own rooms, took up the day; " they met 
Browning, Layard, Gladstone, James Bryce, Tyndall, and 
scores of other eminent Englishmen, and received especial 
attention from Lady Har court, Lady Rosebery, and Sir 
Henry Irving, and Holmes saw the Derby of 1886 ; on the 
3d of June they held a great reception and met three hun- 
dred guests; on the 7th Holmes heard Gladstone deliver 
his famous speech on the Irish question ; Lowell gave him a 
dinner, at which were Leslie Stephen, DuMaurier, Andrew 
Lang, Alma Tadema, and many other artists and literary 



HOLMES 813 

men ; then they spent two days on the Isle of Wight, by 
special invitation, as the guests of Tennyson ; Holmes made 
his first visit to Cambridge in company with Edmund Gosse 
on June 13th; on the 16th he went again, and on the 17th 
received from the University the degree of Doctor of Letters; 
after receiving marked social attentions at Cambridge the 
Holmes's went to Oxford, where the program was repeated ; 
thence by way of York to Edinburgh, and there Holmes 
received LL.D. ; from Edinburgh to Stirling and through the 
Highlands to Glasgow and thence back to Oxford, where 
they were the guests of Vice-Chancellor Jowett, and where 
Browning, Lowell, and John Bright were assembled to meet 
Holmes; from Oxford he received the degree of D.C.L. ; 
after leaving Oxford the party spent a week at Stratford, and 
then went for rest to Great Malvern; thence to Bath, thence 
to Salisbury for a week's sojourn, and thence back to London, 
stopping a week at Brighton ; after staying in London from 
July 29th to August 5th and availing themselves of the absence 
of "society " to see many odd nooks about the old city, they 
crossed to Paris and spent a week there incognito, calling 
on no one but the American Minister and M. Pasteur ; then 
another week in London, a reception in Liverpool, and back 
to Boston August 29, 1886. 

In March, 1888, Holmes began, in the Atlantic, his last 
prose series, entitled "Over the Tea-Cups," saying: "Al- 
though I have cleared the eight- barred gate, my friends 
encourage me with the assurance that I am not yet in my 
second childhood;" in this series of articles the most 
remarkable feature was the poem entitled "The Broomstick 
Train " — a marvellous production for a man eighty years of 
age ; his son Edward, a young man of feeble health but fine 
promise, had died in 1884, and while Holmes was writing 
the " Tea- Cup " series he lost both his wife and daughter ; 
during the last years of the poet his oldest son, Mr. Justice 
Holmes, returned to the homestead on Beacon Street, and 



8 14 HOLMES 

cared for his father most tenderly; about 1886 a cataract 
began to form over one of Holmes's eyes, dimming but not 
destroying his sight; he called it "a <r#/-aract in the kitten 
stage of development ; " this affliction compelled him to do 
most of his writing through an amanuensis; during the last 
half of his life his summers were spent in a simple cottage 
that he owned at Beverly Farms on the north shore of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, where countless attentions were showered upon 
him by near and distant friends and admirers; he was able to 
walk about till his very last day, and died in his chair at his 
Boston home October 7, 1894. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON HOLMES. 

Whittier, J. G., " Literary Recreations." Boston, 1872, Osgood, 128- 

137. 

Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 273-304. . 
Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 76, 77. 
Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, I: 

66-68. 
Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 301, 302. 
Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 

2: 204-219. 
Kennedy, W. S., " O. W. Holmes." Boston, 1883, Cassino & Co. 
Nichol, J., "American Literature." Edinburgh, 1882, Black, 357-363 

and 407-411. 
Haweis, H. R., "American Humorists." London, 1883, Chatto & 

Windus, 37-73- 
Lowell, J. R., " Poetical Works." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin & 

Co., 3: 84,85. 
Walsh, W. S., " Pen Pictures." New York, 1886, Putnam, 144-150. 
Whittier, J. G., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin 

& Co., 4: 142, 143. 
Griswold, R. W., "Poets of America." Philadelphia, 1846, Carey & 

Hart, 341-347- 
Mitford, Miss M. R., "Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 

1851, 399-4IO- 
Harper's Magazine, 83 : 277-385 (G. W. Curtis); 94: 120-154 (W. D. 

Howells). 



HOLMES 815 

Atlantic Monthly, 2J : 653 (Howells); 46:704, 705 (G. P. Lathrop) ; 

70: 401, 402 (Whittier) ; 74: 831 (II. E. Scudder). 
Scribner's Magazine, 18: 117-127 (F. H. Underwood); 16:791-792 

(Editor). 
The Forum, 18 : 271-287 (J. W. Chadwick). 

Literary World, 25 : 350 (Editor) ; 17 : 23 (Editor) ; 16 : 429 (Editor). 
Review of Reviews, 10: 495-501 (E. E. Hale). 
Critic, 22 : 242-257 and 259, and 3: 191, 192 (J. T. Morse); 8 : 46 (H. 

R. Haweis) ; 6: I and 13 (A. W. Rollins); 4: 109 and 133 and 

5 : 97 I 25 : 382- (E. Gosse). 
The Dial (Chicago), 17 : 215-217 and 12: 209-219 (E. G. Johnson). 
North American Review, 64: 208-216 (J. Bowen) ; 68: 201-203 (F. 

Bowen) ; 159: 669-677 (H. C. Lodge) ; 44 : 275 (Palfrey). 
International Review, 8: 501-514 (R. O. Palmer). 
Arena, II : 41-54 (M. J. Savage). 
Good Words, 28: 298-305 (F. H. Underwood). 
Spectator, 61 : 855-858 (F. T. Palgrave). 
Athenaum, 1884 (2), 274 (E. W. Gosse) ; 1888 (i), 787, 788. 
New England Magazine, n. s., I : 115 (G. W. Cooke). 
Nation, 59 : 264, 265 (G. E. Woodberry). 



PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 

i. Buoyancy — Youthfulness— Optimism. 

" The gift is thine the weary world to make 
More cheerful for thy sake, 

Lighting the sullen face of discontent 

With smiles for blessings sent." — Whittier. 

" It is Holmes's special peculiarity that the childish buoy- 
ancy remains almost to the end, unbroken and irrepressible." 
— Leslie Stephen. 

"The thing we first note is his elastic, buoyant nature, 
displayed from youth to age with cheery frankness. 
Before his day the sons of the Puritans were hardly ripe for 
the doctrine that there is a time to laugh, that humor is quite 
as helpful a constituent of life as gravity or gloom." — E. C. 
Stedman. 



8l6 HOLMES 

" I hold him as having an inalienable right to all the fresh- 
ness and sincerity and vivacity of youth, with gravity strug- 
gling hard to keep dominion over his countenance and laugh- 
ter escaping for shelter to his eyes." — George Bancroft. 

" I knew Dr. Holmes more than sixty years ago. He was 
a very small boy then — he is still [1879] hardly less of a boy, 
thank Heaven ! " — W. H. Furness. 

"The first thing which strikes a reader of Holmes is the 
vigor and elasticity of his nature. . . . One thing ap- 
pears certain, that he never can grow old. . . . It is im- 
possible to read his later poems without being impressed by 
that spirit of youthfulness with which they are animated." 
— E. P. Whipple. 

"We find in Dr. Holmes a cheerful and a hopeful spirit. 
His mission has been to cherish hope in men and to 
plant courage in their hearts. . . . He will always be a 
boy, even if his fourscore years should grow into a century. 
The spirit of the boy is in him, and will not out at any bid- 
ding whatsoever." — G. W. Cooke. 

" [The Poem on Contentment] is a most fair confession of 
his liking for life's fair and pleasant things. . . . He was 
neither stoic nor ascetic ; neither indifferent to life's sweet 
and pleasant things nor, while hankering for their possession, 
did he repress his noble rage and freeze the genial currents of 
his soul. His was an undisguised enjoyment of earthly com- 
forts ; a happy confidence in the excellence and glory of our 
present life ; a persuasion, as one has said, ' that if God made 
us, then he also meant us ; ' and he held to these things so 
earnestly, so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that he could not help 
communicating them to everything he wrote. . . . He 
wrote in such a jocund way, with such animal spirits and 
pure absurdity." — -John Chadwick. 

"He secured from the gods, who gave him immortality, 
also eternal youth." — H. H. Boyesen. 

"With the kindliness and humanity of the Doctor's tern- 



HOLMES 817 

perament there were linked the kindred virtues of uncon- 
querable cheerfulness and buoyancy, with the courage which 
is the natural comrade of these traits. His philosophy was 
not defiant but serene." — -J. T. Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys? 
If there has, take him out, without making a noise. 
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite ! 
Old time is a liar ! We're twenty to-night ! 



n 



We're twenty ! We're twenty ! Who says we are more ? 
He's tipsy, — young jackanapes !— show him the door! 
' Gray temples at twenty ? ' — Yes ! white if you please ; 
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze." 

— The Boys. 

" We see that Time robs us, we know that he cheats, 
But we still find a charm in his pleasant deceits, 
While he leaves the remembrance of all that was best, 
Love, friendship, and hope, and the promise of rest." 

— Our Banker. 

" I have come to grow young — on my word I declare 
I have thought I detected a change in my hair ! 
One hour with 'the boys ' will restore it to brown, — 
And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down." 

— What I Have Come For. 

2. Colloquial Habit — Familiarity — Self-Revela- 
tion. — " The colloquial habit of the Autocrat is so marked 
generally as to be called distinctive. It is the quality of all 
the authors who are distinctly beloved as persons by their 
readers, and it is to this class that Holmes especially belongs. 
Without the private personal touch of the essayist in 
his stories they would not be his. His colloquial habit is 
very winning when governed by a natural delicacy and an ex- 
quisite literary instinct. No other author takes the reader 
into his personal confidence more closely than Holmes, and 



8l8 HOLMES 

none reveals his personal temperament more clearly. 
The kindly mentor takes the reader by the button and lays 
his hand upon his shoulder, not with the rude familiarity of 
the bully or the boor, but with the courtesy of Montaigne, the 
friendliness of John Aubrey, or the wise cheer of Selden. 
The reader glows with the pleasure of an individual greeting, 
and a wide diocese of those whom the Autocrat never saw 
plume themselves proudly upon his personal acquaintance." 
— George William Curtis. 

" His dialogues and stories are in every way the expression 
of a stimulating personage, their author — a frank display of 
the Autocrat himself. . . . His writings surely owe their 
main success to an approximate exhibition of the author him- 
self." — E. C. Stedtnan. 

" There is something akin to affection which connects such 
poets with their readers, when poet and readers are at their 
best. They cannot be Shelleys, but they win by warmth, 
though they dazzle not by splendor. Poets of this class put 
their individual selves into iambus and trochee. Their per- 
sonal attractiveness is transmuted into poetic force. 
Manliness finds in Holmes a friend and culture a companion." 
— C. F. Richardso7i. 

" He was — and is — one of the few writers who are present 
at the reading of their own works — a conversationalist in type, 
on paper — a dear friend living between the covers of a printed 
book. . . . He, more than most men, liked the sym- 
pathy of those for whom he wrote, and was willing to secure 
it by advances toward them, in which ... he revealed 
his personality." — Edward Everett Hale. 

''There is a flavor of personality which can never be mis- 
taken. On every page you see ' Holmes, his mark.' 
The absence of formality is one of the principal charms. 
His unique personality was as dear as his writings. 
His works have put him in intimate personal rela- 
tion with all readers of refined feeling." — F. H. Underwood. 



HOLMES 819 

" What he wrote that he was, and every one felt this who 
met him. . . . [It is] the Autocrat in his best moods — 
those moments when, all barriers of invention and situation 
broken down, the author talks face to face, or rather soul 
to soul, consciousness to consciousness, with the reader." — 
W. D. Howells. 

" The one most charming feature of his printed and spoken 
conversation is that he established a relation of sympathy 
between himself and his readers, or listeners, by expressing 
for them those common every-day thoughts that we all think 
but rarely say. . . . The sunshine of his soul gleams out 
upon you so often that you forget the offensive egotism of the 
cit in the charm of the artless humor and tender sympathy of 
his nature." — W. S. Kennedy. 

11 Dr. Holmes had put not only the best but absolutely all, 
both of himself and about himself into the volumes with which 
he had amused and instructed the English-speaking world." 
— -/. T. Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" I care not much for gold or land ; — 

Give me a mortgage here and there, — 

Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 
Or trifling railroad share, — 

I only ask that Fortune send 

A little more than I shall spend." — Contentment. 

" O Damsel Dorothy ! Dorothy Q. ! 
Strange is the gift that I owe to you ; 

What if, a hundred years ago, 

Those close-shut lips had answered No, 

When forth the tremulous question came 

That cost the maiden her Norman name, 

And under the folds that look so still 

The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill ? 

Should I be I, or would it be 

One-tenth another to nine-tenths me ? " — Dorothy Q. 



820 HOLMES 

M For myself, I'm relied on by friends in extremities, 
And I don't mind so much if a comfort to them it is ; 
'T is a pleasure to please, and the straw that can tickle us 
Is a source of enjoyment though slightly ridiculous." 

— At the Atlantic Dinner. 

3. Unconventionality — Simple Treatment of 
Weighty Themes. — " The researches of most scientific 
men, especially in abstruse subjects, like the relations of body 
and mind, are preserved in works which the public cannot 
understand if they should try. What Tyndall has done in 
the interpretation of the laws of nature is done even more 
brilliantly by Holmes ; and this is not due to any letting 
down of the subject ; it is rather furnishing the means for the 
ordinary mind to ascend to the higher level of thought. 
The truth was, prosaic folks had no way to estimate 
Holmes. They wrote only stately sentences, while he was 
free, when he chose, to use the simplest language of e#ery-day 
life. The ideas they would formally promulgate in methodical 
order he lashed upon the reader with a dazzling wit." — 
F. H. Underwood. 

" ' Soundings from the Atlantic ' are certainly unique in 
their combination of airy, humorous treatment with solid 
scientific discussion or teaching." — IV. S. Kennedy. 

" [He is] a kind of attenuated Franklin who views things 
with less robustness but keener distinction and insight. . . . 
Somewhat distrustful of ' the inner light,' he stands square - 
ly upon observation, experience, and induction." — E. C. 
Stedman. 

11 People could not believe that a man so perfectly intelli- 
gible could be profoundly wise. . . . Mystic Holmes 
might be, but mysterious he never was." — IV. D. Howells. 

"He is peculiarly exasperating to theological opponents 
for the very easy way in which he gayly overlooks 
considerations which their whole culture has induced them to 
deem of vital moment." — E. P. Whipple. 



HOLMES 821 

" There is no straining for effect ; simple, natural thoughts 
are expressed in simple and perfectly transparent language." 
— Whittier. 

" [Dr. Holmes has been fond of exploring] that weird 
border-land between science and speculation where psychol- 
ogy and physiology exercise mixed jurisdiction." — Lowell. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Be firm ! one constant element in luck 
Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck ; 
See yon tall shaft ; it felt the earthquake's thrill, 
Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. 

Don't catch the fidgets ; you have found your place 
Just in the focus of a nervous race, 
Fretful to change, and rabid to discuss, 
Full of excitements, always in a fuss ; — 
Think of the patriarchs ; then compare as men 
These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen ! 
Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath ; 
Work like a man, but don't be worked to death." 

— Urania. 

'* We, like the leaf, the summit, and the wave, 
Reflect the light our common nature gave ; 
But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, 
Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own ; 
Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, 
Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea; 
Lost, like the lightning, in the sullen clod, 
Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God ; 
Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, 
Or quivering roseate in the leaves of Love." — Poetry. 

" Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, 
Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower : 

High overhead the trellised roses burn ; 

Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, — 
A leaf without a flower. 



822 HOLMES 

11 What though the rose-leaves fall ? They still are sweet, 
And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, 

While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, 

' For us no bud, no blossom wakes to greet 
The joyous flowering time ! ' 

" Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread 

And flowers to cherish ; summer round thee glows ; 
Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, 
But while its petals still are burning red 

Gather life's full-blown rose." — The Rose and the Fern. 

4. Piquant Satire — Graceful Badinage. — "His 

metrical satires are of the amiable sort that debars him from 
kinmanship with the Juvenals of old or the Popes and 
Churchills of more recent time. . . . Yet he is a keen 
observer of the follies and chances which satire makes its 
food. As his humor had relaxed the grimness of a Puritan 
constituency, so his prose satire did much to liberalize their 
clerical system." — E. C. Stedman. 

" All his trenchant bits of criticism and pretended dogma- 
tism have attached to them, like a corollary, a little hint that 
the cure for it all is charity — the understanding of other men 
better. . . . Do you remember ' Urania, a Rhymed 
Lesson,' away back in his youthful crays — with what good 
humor it picked out all the little solecisms of dress, manners, 
and talk, and yet left the perpetrators, while entirely cured, 
feeling as though they were laughed with and not at?" — 
R. W. Gilder. 

" Holmes is distinctively and purely a satirist, and for a 
lifetime has been lashing others with the most stinging and 
excoriating satire (tempered with humor and good-nature). 
When at his best, his humor has the genial and 
kindly character which marks that of all great humorists ; but 
too often it is only an ironical smirk, a sardonical grin, a 
laughing at others instead of with them." — IV. S. Kennedy. 



HOLMES 823 

" His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric 
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric, 
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes 
That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's." 

— Lowell. 
"His manner of satirizing the foibles ... of con- 
ventional life is altogether peculiar and original. 
He looks at folly and pretension from the highest pinnacle of 
scorn. They never provoke his indignation, for to him they 
are too mean to justify anger, and are hardly worth petu- 
lance."—^. P. Whipple. 

ft The two bete noirs of Holmes are homoeopathy and end- 
less punishment, and he never lets an opportunity pass of 
giving a thrust at either. . . . The pleasantry is never 
mocking or malevolent, and the exuberance of spirit is con- 
tagious." — F. H. Underwood. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" My aunt ! my poor deluded aunt ! 
Her hair is almost gray ; 
Why will she train that winter curl 
In such a springlike way ? 
How can she lay her glasses down, 
And say she reads as well, 
When, through a double convex lens, 
She just makes out to spell ? " — My Aunt. 

'* Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero, 

Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean ; 
Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero 

Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine. 

" As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty 
For ringing the changes on metrical chimes ; 
A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty 

Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes." 

— A Familiar Letter. 



824 HOLMES 

" I think there is a knot of you 
Beneath the hollow tree, — 
A knot of spinster Katydids, — 
Do Katydids drink tea ? 

Oh, tell me, where does Katy live, 

And what did Katy do ? 

And was she very fair and young, 

And yet so wicked, too ? 

Did Katy love a naughty man, 

Or kiss more cheeks than one ? 

I'll warrant Katy did no more 

Than many a Kate has done." — To an Insect. 

5. Exuberant, Dazzling Wit. — " The movement of 
his wit is so swift that it is known only when it strikes. He 
will sometimes, as it were, blind the eyes of his victims with 
diamond-dust, then pelt them pitilessly with scoffing compli- 
ments. He passes from the sharp and stinging gibe to the 
most grotesque exaggerations of drollery with a most bewil- 
dering rapidity." — E. P. Whipple. 

11 There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; 
A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit 
The electrical tingles of hit after hit." — Lowell. 

" His wit is all his own, so sly and tingling, but without a 
drop of ill-nature in it, and never leaving a sting behind." 
— Francis Bowen. 

" A restless wit that sees the different sides, the contradic- 
tions, and cannot forbear to flash upon the eye all the vari- 
ous angles of truth, while never ceasing to take the view of 
the poet." — G. P. Lathrop. 

"If any of our readers need amusement and the wholesome 
alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend them, not to Dr. 
Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the 
wit, and the humorist. He was born for the ' laughter-cure' 
as certainly as Priessnitz was for the ' water-cure,' and has 
been quite as successful in his way." — Whittier. 



HOLMES 825 

il Holmes's rapier of wit and his social genius were so 
flashing and brilliant that few realized his vigor as a philoso- 
pher and thinker." — E. C. Stedman. 

"As a writer of comic poetry he is excelled by no other 
English author. Hood's verses are not so gayly radiant as 
Holmes's, — do not strike the diaphragm so deeply. 
The comic in him is always saved from Rodomontade and 
monstrosity by an equipoise of shrewd practical sense; we 
tremble as his glowing wheel grazes the brim of bombast and 
folly; but, with a cut of the lash and a short turn away, he 
flies again, laughing, and we laughing with him." — W. S. 
Kennedy. 

" Probably few of our wits have done so many set tasks in 
the 'funny line,' and done them so well as he; and few, 
with any celebrity as wits, have so rarely set themselves to 
tasks of their own in that line." — J. T. Morse. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The times were hard when Rip to manhood grew ; 
They always will be when there's work to do ; 
He tried at farming — found it rather slow — 
And then at teaching — what he didn't know. 



" Talk of your science ! after all is said 

There's nothing like a bare and shiny head ; 

Age lends the graces that are sure to please ; 

Folks want their doctors mouldy, like their cheese." 

— Rip Van Winkle, M.D. 

"And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, 
By right divine, no doubt, among the wits ; 
Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, — 
The man that often speaks, but never talks." 

— The Banker's Dinner. 



826 HOLMES 

" What dreams we've had of deathless name, as scholars, states- 
men, bards, 
When Fame, the lady with the trump, held up her picture- 
cards ! 
Till, having nearly played our game, she gayly whispered, 
1 Ah ! ' 

I said you should be something grand, — you'll soon be grand- 

papa." — To the Harvard Alumni. 

6. Fanciful Humor. — " To write good comic verse is a 
different thing from writing good comic poetry. A jest or a 
sharp saying may easily be made to rhyme; but to blend 
ludicrous ideas with fancy and imagination and to display in 
their conception and expression the same poetic qualities 
usually exercised in serious composition, is a rare distinction. 
Among American poets we know of no one who excels 
Holmes in this difficult branch of art. . . . Many of 
his pleasant lyrics seem not so much the offspring of wit as 
of fancy and sentiment turned in a humorous direction." — 
E. P. Whipple. 

" For clear and unstudied humor, a sense of which creeps 
slowly and delightfully throughout the whole frame, the poems 
of the young contributor [to the Collegian] were superior to 
those of Hood, the great humorist of that day. 
Holmes is greatest as a humorist. When at its best his 
humor has the genial and kindly character which marks that 
of all the great humorists." — W. S. Kennedy. 

II It does not appear that anyone else did so much as Dr. 
Holmes to change the social temper of New England, to 
make it less harsh and joyless, and to make easier for his fel- 
low-countrymen the transition from old things to new." — 
J. W. Chadwick. 

" [Holmes's humor is] fun shading down to seriousness and 
seriousness shading up to fun." — Lowell. 
" You with the classic few belong 

Who tempered wisdom with a smile." — Lowell. 



HOLMES 827 

" His humor is so grotesque and queer that it reminds one 
of the frolics of Puck." — Francis Bowen. % 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" How the mountains talked together, 
Looking down upon the weather, 
When they heard our friend had planned his 
Little trip among the Andes ! 
How they'll bear their snowy scalps 
To the climber of the Alps 
When the cry goes through their passes, 
' Here comes the great Agassiz ! ' " 

— A Farewell to Agassiz. 

" I know it is a sin 
For me to sit and grin 

At him here ; 
But the old three-cornered hat, 
And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer! 

" And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring, 
Let them smile, as I do now, 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling." — The Last Leaf. 



Since then on many a car you'll see 
A broom-stick plain as plain can be ; 
On every stick there's a witch astride,- 
The string you see to her leg is tied. 
She will do mischief if she can, 
But the string is held by a careful man ; 
And whenever the evil-minded witch 
Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch." 

— The Broomstick Train. 



828 HOLMES 

7- Pathos. — " The poet of ' The Last Leaf was among 
the first to teach his countrymen that pathos is an equal pan' 
of true humor ; that sorrow is lightened by jest and jest re- 
deemed from coarseness by emotion, under most conditions o\ 
this our evanescent human life." — E. C. Stedman. 

" The fun in Holmes is always jostling the pathos. . . . 
Its [" The Last Leafs "J pathos is all the more surprising in 
connection with the queer humor in the description of the old 
man who is the subject of the poem. . . . After some 
comic picture, grotesque phrase, or quick thrust, the reader 
comes suddenly upon a stanza of perfect beauty of form, with 
the gentlest touch of natural feeling." — F. H. Underwood. 

" Broadly speaking, Holmes is Janus-faced ; that is, he has 
a dual nature : he laughs on one side of his face, and is seri- 
ous on the other; in one mood fun, humor, laughing satire 
predominate; he is a Yorick, a Mercutio, and as 

nimble-witted as they ; but suddenly some hidden spring of 
feeling or pathos is touched, the eyes brim with tears, and the 
soul soars upward in a rapt passion of tenderest sentiment. 
His finest humor borders close upon pathos." — W. 
S. Kennedy. 

" And his the pathos touching all 

Life's aims and sorrows and regrets, 
Its hopes and fears, its final call 

And rest beneath the violets." — Whittle?'. 

" * Homesick in Heaven ' seems to me one of the most 
profoundly pathetic poems in the language." — W. D. How- 
ells. 

" Such lyrics as ' La Grisette ' and < The Last Leaf ' show 
that he possesses the power of touching the deeper chords of 
the heart and of calling forth tears as well as smiles." — Whit- 
tier. 

"It is the pathos in the last of these lines [in ' The Last 
Leaf ' ] that makes the richness of the humor, a pathos that is 
deep and sympathetic. If he laughs at what is amusing in the 



HOLMES 829 

deeds or in the characters of men, he can weep with them, 
too ; and by his weeping he shows that he is fully alive to 
their distress and their sorrows. It is only a moment's touch 
from laughter to tears ; and he has truly recognized the fact 
that pathos lies deeper in the nature than humor, and that 
humor must have its basis in the pathetic when it is most ser- 
viceable and most human." — G. W. Cooke. 

11 Still in thy human tenderness they feel 

The honest voice and beating heart of Steele." 

— Edmund Gosse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" If any, born of kindlier blood, 
Should ask, What maiden lies below ? 
Say only this : ' A tender bud, 
That tried to blossom in the sun, 
Lies withered where the violets blow.'" 

— Under the Violets. 

" A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them : — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in them ! 



" Oh, hearts that break and give no sign 
Save whitening lip and fading tresses, , 
Till Death pours out his longed-for wine 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses ! " 

— The Voiceless. 

" Youth longs, and manhood strives, but age remembers, 
Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, 
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers 
That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. 

11 Dear to its heart is every loving token 

That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, 
Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, 

Its labors ended and its story told." — The Iron Gate. 



83O HOLMES 

8. Point — Epigram — Whimsical Paradox. — " The 

most obvious characteristic of Holmes's poetry is its combined 
terseness and finish. The lines are often poetical proverbs 
or epigrams with vigor and point in every phrase." — F. H. 
Underwood. 

11 His shrewd sayings are bright with native metaphor ; he 
is a proverb-maker, some of whose words are not without 
wings. . . . His pertinent maxims are so frequent that 
it seems as if he had jotted them down from time to time and 
here first brought them to application ; they are apothegms 
of common life and action, often of mental experience, strung 
together by a device so original as to make the work quite a 
novelty in literature." — E. C. Stedman. 

"When the Autocrat himself begins talking, the sparks of 
epigram fly in a bracing wind of free thought, as scintillating 
particles of snow are whirled from the roofs in winter by 
every chance breeze." — Hele?i Gray Cone. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The style's the man, so books avow ; 
The style's the woman, anyhow." 

— How the Old Horse Wo?i the Bet. 

" No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, 
Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore." 

— A Modest Request. 

" I always thought cold victuals nice ; — 

My choice would be vanilla ice." — Contentment. 

" And with new notions — let me change the rule — 
Don't strike the iron till it's slightly cool."— Urania. 

9. Sportive Fancy. — "Like his wit, humor, and pathos, 
this frolicsome fancy marks everything that Holmes has writ- 
ten. In the contributions [to the New England magazines] 



HOLMES 831 

of the young graduate the high spirits of a frolicsome fancy 
effervesce and sparkle." — George William Curtis. 
" That song has flecked with rosy gold 
The sails that fade o'er fancy's sea." 

— William Winter. 

11 It riots in his measures . . . — fancy which he 
tenders in lieu of imagination and power. The consecutive 
poems of one whose fancy plays about e life as he saw it may be 
a feast complete and epicurean, having solid dishes and fan- 
tastic, all justly savored, cooked with discretion, flanked with 
honest wine, and whose cates and dainties, even, are not de- 
signed to cloy — a fancy whose glint, if not imagination, is like 
that of the sparks struck off from it. . . . To this day 
[1885] there is no telling whither a fancy, once caught and 
mounted, will bear this lively rider." — E. C. Stedman. 

" His sense of the ludicrous is not keener than his sense of 
the beautiful ; his wit and humor are but the sportive exercise 
of a fancy and imagination which he has abundantly exer- 
cised on serious topics." — E. P. Whipple. 

" Out of the medley of bright thoughts and quaint satire 
shine gleams of brilliant fancy. His extraordinary alertness 
of mind enables him to expound his subject by a variety of 
ingenious images, to decorate it with novel suggestions, and 
to throw upon it many charming side-lights." — R. E. Pro- 
thero. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" The lady of a thousand loves, 

The darling of the old religion, 
Had only left, of all the doves 

That drew her car, one fan-tailed pigeon. 

" The goddess spoke, and gently stripped 
Her bird of every caudal feather ; 
A strand of gold-bright hair she clipped, 
And bound the glossy plumes together. 



832 HOLMES 

" And lo, the Fan ! for beauty's hand 
The lovely queen of beauty made it ; 
The price she named was hard to stand, 
But Venus smiled : the Hebrew paid it." 

— The First Fan. 

" This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 

In gulfs enchanted where the Siren sings, 
And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair." 

— The Chambered Nautilus. 

" At last young April, ever frail and fair, 

Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, 

Chased to the margin of receding floods 

O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, 

In tears and blushes sighs herself away, 

And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May." 

— Spring. 

10. Sincerity — Honesty — Manliness. — Although 
many of his victims, theological and medical, have writhed 
under the poet's castigations, all admit his honesty and his 
entire freedom from that morbidness and sentimentality that 
sometimes mar the work of great writers. From the critic 
of Holmes's first volume, who declares that " there is not a 
particle of humbug in him," to that reviewer, writing after 
the poet's death, who wishes for a list "of the men now in 
middle age whose mental tone has been, consciously or un- 
consciously, considerably influenced by the kindly castiga- 
tion, until they seem intolerable of shams and half-baked pre- 
tences that otherwise they might have gone on tolerating," 
— through all those fifty years the Autocrat ever spoke in 
what Bayard Taylor fitly calls " that freshness and heartiness 
of tone which springs from a fountain lower than the brain." 



HOLMES 833 

" He is fresh and manly even when he securely treads the 
scarcely-marked line which separates sentiment from senti- 
mentality. . . . He valorously invites and courts the ma- 
licious sharpness of the most unfriendly criticism. By thus 
daring, provoking, and defying opposition both to his pro- 
fessional and literary reputation, he seems to us to indicate a 
real if somewhat impatient love of truth. . . . Nobody 
can justly appreciate Holmes who does not perceive an imper- 
sonal earnestness and insight beneath the play of his provok- 
ing personal wit. . . . Even his petulances of sarcasm 
are but eccentric utterances of a love of truth which has its 
source in the deepest and gravest sentiments of his nature." 
— E. P. Whipple. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

— " Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray — 

They heard the story — ' Bleed ! ' says Doctor Green, 

4 That's downright murder ! cut his throat, you mean ! 

Leeches ! the reptiles ! Why, for pity's sake, 

Not try an adder or a rattlesnake ? 

Blisters ! Why, bless you, they're against the law ! 

It's rank assault and battery if they draw ! 

The portal system ! What's the man about ? 
Unload your nonsense ! Calomel's played out ! " — 

— Rip Van Winkle, M.D. 

" I tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer ; 
I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here ; 

M 'T is but the fool that loves excess ; hast thou a drunken soul ? 
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl ! " 

— On Lending a Punch Bowl. 

"Yet, true to our course, though the shadows grow dark, 
We'll trim our broad sail as before, 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 
Nor ask how we look from the shore." 

— Sun and Shadow. 
53 



834 HOLMES 

ii. Earnestness — Serious Purpose. — Those who 
estimate Oliver Wendell Holmes merely as a wit come far 
short of a true conception of the man and of his genius. He 
was by no means unaware of the risk he ran of being miscon- 
strued by that very large and highly respectable race of critics 
and readers who mistake dull sobriety for wisdom, and con- 
found wit with buffoonery. In one of his anniversary poems, 
written at the very beginning of his literary career, he says to 
the friends who have urged him to lend his song to their 
merriment : 

" Besides, my prospects — don't you know that people won' tem- 
ploy 
A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy, 
And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root ? " 

"Holmes is not only a ' funny man ' but a great poet, great 
on high and noble themes, and still greater in drawing the 
truest poetry from the most humble, homely, and even comi- 
cal subjects. . . . He possesses the power of touching 
the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as 
well as smiles. . . . The serious purpose is hardly hid- 
den beneath the light-hearted play of any of Holmes's works. 
Wisdom or joke, fun or retrospect, there is a pur- 
pose behind it all." — Edward Everett Hale. 
i ' His sparkling surface scarce betrays 

The tide of thought beneath it rolled — 
The wisdom of the latter days 

And tender memories of the old." — Whittier. 
" Dr. Holmes's inevitable gayety and exhilaration have in 
a measure concealed the deep earnestness of the man, his love 
of truth, his devotion to humanity, his passion for excel- 
lence." — O. B. Erothifigham. 

"He is not more a wit than a philosopher. Indeed, 
behind all his humor is a motive of strong moral purpose. 
. . . He does not believe in joy and happiness at the 



HOLMES 835 

expense of virtue or at the expense of truth. He has been a 
preacher all his life of the most serious gospel of duty and 
fidelity. . . . More than one-half of his published 
verses are on serious subjects and in very earnest mood. 
Several of his best poems are marked by a lofty spiritual 
aspiration, and they touch some of the deepest sentiments in 
human nature." — G. W. Cooke. 

"With Holmes the sparkles of wit are like bubbles on a 
strong tide of feeling." — F. H. Underwood. 

"Though all the world thinks of Dr. Holmes as a wit, he 
was, in fact, a writer with very grave and serious purposes. 
. He was a man profoundly in earnest, deeply con- 
scientious. He wrote under an ever-present sense of respon- 
sibility."—/. T. Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
As the swift seasons roll ! 
Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." 

— The Chambered Nautilus, 



" Lord of all life, below, above, 
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, 
Before thy ever-blazing throne 
We ask no lustre of our own. 



" Grant us thy truth to make us free, 
And kindling hearts that burn for thee, 
Till all thy living altars claim 
One holy light, one heavenly flame ! " 

— A Sun- Day Hymn. 



836 HOLMES 

" Enough of speech ! the trumpet rings ; 
Be silent, patient, calm, — 
God help them if the tempest swings 
The pine against the palm." 

— A Voice of the Loyal North. 

12. Localism — Sectionalism. — Few writers have been 
so attached to a locality and few volumes are so tinged with 
localism as are those of Holmes. 

" He is an essential part of Boston, like the crier who 
becomes so identified with a court that it seems as if Justice 
must change her quarters when he is gone. The Boston of 
Holmes, distinct as his own personality, certainly must go 
with him." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Dr. Holmes had the passion of local patriotism. 
His familiar habit of mind was cordially local. His affection 
fastened upon his college and on his class ; he loved the city 
of his life with the passion of the man who can be at home in 
only one place." — H. E. Scudder. 

" He is a part of the past of Boston. ... In becom- 
ing famous he did not cease to be local. It was as a Boston 
man that he was known." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" Holmes is essentially a New Englander, and one of the 
most faithful and shrewd interpreters of New England." — 
George William Curtis. 

* ' He is fairly Boston's laureate. . . . He believed in 
Boston as Johnson did in London." — F. H. Underwood. 

" The streets of London were not more beloved by John- 
son and Lamb than those of Boston have been by Holmes. 
He has made only short swallow-flights beyond the 
limits of his own beloved city. If he goes to Paris, he 
carries Boston with him ; if he goes to New York or Philadel- 
phia, he only sighs and compares them with Boston to their 
disadvantage, and gets back as quick as he can to the hub of 
the solar system. A barnacle is not more closely identified 
with its rock or a pearl with its oyster than Holmes with St. 



HOLMES 837 

Botolph's town. All his books might be labelled ' Talks with 
My Neighbors,' and this very provincialism or urban patriot- 
ism forms their chief charm. He is indigenous ; throws up 
New England sub-soil as he ploughs; his homespun characters 
speak the native patois, and the whole tone of his writings 
is unaffectedly Yankee." — W. S. Kennedy. 

" Dr. Holmes was a New Englander from the central 
thread of his marrow to his outermost rind ; he could have 
made himself nothing else ; he knew this and accepted it, not 
as a limitation, but with a just pleasure and sense of power." 
— /. T. Morse. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

— " Nicest place that ever was seen, — 
Colleges red and Common green, 
Sidewalks brownish, with trees between. 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies, 
When the canker worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
In a quiet slumber lies." 

— Parson TureWs Legacy. 



it 



New England, we love thee ; no time can erase 
From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 
'T is the mother's fond look of affection and pride, 
As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride." 

— To the New England Society. 



i 1 



And were it any spot on earth 

Save this dear home that gave him birth 

Some scores of years ago, 
He had not come to spoil your mirth 

And chill your festive glow ; 
But round his baby-nest he strays, — 
With tearful eye the scene surveys, 
His heart unchanged by changing days, — 

That's what he'd have you know." 

— Old Cambridge, 



838 HOLMES 

13. Conservatism — Quaintness. — " The distinction 
between his poetry and that of the new makers of society verse 
is that his is a survival, theirs the attempted revival, of some- 
thing that has gone before. He wears the seal of ' that past 
Georgian day ' by direct inheritance. His work is as emblem- 
atic of the past as are the stairways and hand-carvings in 
various houses of Cambridge. His verses have the courtesy 
and wit, without the pedagogy, of the knee-buckle time, and 
a flavor that is really their own. He has an ear for the classi- 
cal forms of English verse. The conservative persistency of 
his muse is as notable in matter as in manner. He takes un- 
kindly to sentimental attempts at reform. . . . Innova- 
tion savors ill to his nostril. . . . Dr. Holmes stands for 
the ancestral feeling as squarely as he refutes the old belief." 
— E. C. Stedman. 

" There is a great deal in Holmes that reminds one of 
William Spencer, of Crabbe, Pope, Hood, and the prize 
poets of the English universities. . . . How closely the 
lyrics of Dr. Holmes resemble those of Goldsmith and Pope 
no careful reader needs to be told." — W. S. Ke?inedy. 

"For him we can find no living prototype; to track his 
footsteps, we must go back as far as Pope or Dryden. 
Lofty, poignant, graceful, grand, high of thought, and clear of 
word, we could fancy ourselves reading some pungent page 
of 'Absalom and Achitophel,' were it not for the pervading 
nationality." — Mary Russell Mitford. 

" There is visible in his writings also some of that homely 
astuteness which seems to have died out with the polish of 
modern manners. . . . He has remained loyal to eigh- 
teenth century models. . . . This very conservatism in 
regard to models may be a guaranty of enduring fame." — I?. 
H. Underwood. 

"The extraordinary success which Dr. Holmes has had 
in adhering to an antiquated form of verse is due to its ad- 
mirable fitness to be the vehicle of his mind. . . . The 



HOLMES 839 

conservatism observable in his poetry was characteristic of his 
entire nature." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" In Dr. Holmes's make up conservatism in things political 
and social was curiously compounded with the progressive 
tendency in religious thought." — J. T. Morse. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

* ' I love the memory of the past — its pressed yet fragrant flowers, — 
The moss that clothes its broken walls — the ivy on its towers ; — 
Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed, — my eyes grow moist and 

dim, 
To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim." 

— On Lending a Punch Bowl. 

" Full seven score years our city's pride — 
The comely Southern spire — 
Has cast its shadow, and defied 
The storm, the foe, the fire ; 
Sad is the sight our eyes behold ; 

Woe to the three-hilled town, 
When through the land the tale is told — 
* The brave " Old South " is down.' " 

— An Appeal for the Old South Church. 

" Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong 
The first staid foot-steps of my square-toed song; 
Full well I know the strong heroic line 
Has lost its fashion since I made it mine ; 
But there are tricks old singers will not learn, 
And this grave measure still must serve my turn." 

— At a Medical Dinner. 

14. Adaptability — Occasionalism. — While his humor 
resembles that of Steele and Lamb, and his wit that of Hood 
and Lowell, Dr. Holmes has one characteristic in which he 
surpasses all other writers pre-eminently. He is, of all poets, 



840 HOLMES 

the poet of occasion. An examination of his works reveals no 
less than thirty-two poems written for anniversaries of " that 
happy class " of 1829 at Harvard, while we find seventy-five 
other poems written for as many other commemorative occa- 
sions. 

" The things which sharply distinguish Holmes from other 
poets are the lyrics and metrical essays composed for special 
audiences or occasions. He is our typical university poet; 
the minstrel of the college that bred him, and within whose 
liberties he has taught, jested, sung, and toasted from boy- 
hood to what in common folk would be old age. 
With his own growth his brilliant occasional pieces strength- 
ened in thought, wit, and feeling. . . . How sure their 
author's sense of the fitness of things, his gift of adaptability 
to the occasion ! Now, what has carried Holmes so bravely 
through all this if not a kind of special masterhood, an indi- 
viduality, humor, touch, that we shall not see again ? Thus 
we come, in fine, to be sensible of the distinctive gift of this 
poet." — E. C. Stedman. 

" Holmes was class poet at Harvard, and he remained 
class poet all his life. . . . After reading a dozen or 
more pages of the neat Augustan couplets of Holmes's best 
verse d' occasion, you have the comfortable feeling of a man 
who has just dispatched a dish of hickory-nuts cracked in 
halves and intermingled with raisins." — W. S. Ke7inedy. 

" As the poet of occasion, no one has ever surpassed 
him. . . . He was always apt, always happy, always had 
the essential lightness of touch and the right mingling of wit 
and sentiment." — Henry Cabot Lodge. 

" Throughout the year [as editor of the Atlantic] I could 
count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so 
easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse." — W. 
D. Howells. 

" Holmes has been a great part of what he sings, at Cam- 
bridge, at the old Saturday Club, at King's Chapel. The 



HOLMES 841 

subject delights him, and perhaps this is why his occasional 
verses are uniformly so successful. To him the occasion is all 
that inspiration is to the less ready and versatile poet — a true 
gift of the muse." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" He, of all men, seemed to have the invention, the dash, 
and the native grace which give to occasional verse its natural 
and spontaneous air." — F. H. Underwood. 
" For still as comes the festal day, 
In many a temple far and near, 
The word that all have longed to say, 

The words that all are proud to hear, 
Fall from his lips with conquering sway, 
Or grave or gay." — William Winter. 
"We doubt whether any other poet has done so much to 
lift the ' occasional ' into the classic. With the exception of 
some half dozen poems of Goethe's and, perhaps, one of Camp- 
bell's, Mr. Holmes is unrivalled in his power of flashing the 
light of higher thought and the fragrance of lofty sentiment 
upon the banquet or commemorative meeting. In fact, this 
is one of his native gifts, which has been so frequently and 
delightfully exercised that it may lead some of his readers to 
overlook his admirable lyrics." — Bayard Taylor. 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" You'll believe me, dear boys, 'tis a pleasure to rise, 
With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; 
To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone, 
Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. 

" Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, 
My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all ; 
If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, 
It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand." 

— Our Indian Summer, 



842 HOLMES 

" Adieu ! I've trod my annual track 

How long ! — let others count the miles, — 
And peddled out my rhyming pack 

To friends who always paid in smiles." 

— Chanson without Music. 

" Will I come? That is pleasant! I beg to inquire 
If the gun that I carry has ever missed fire ? 
And which was the muster-roll — mention but one — 
That missed your old comrade who carries the gun ? " 

— Once More. 

15. Conviviality. — Like Dickens, Holmes is sometimes 
fond of extolling the merits of the cup ; like Dickens again, he 
covets, not the physical effects, but the mental exhilaration 
and the good-fellowship attendant on a moderate use of wine. 

" [He was] decidedly a conservative in general tendency. 
With all the abundant flow of hilarity in some of his class 
songs, he can scarcely be called jovial ; and, in spite of his 
having written a fine bacchanalian song, he is by nature and 
habit abstemious." — F. H. Underwood. 

11 Many of his youthful stanzas are in celebration of com- 
panionship and good cheer. . . . Even his ballads are 
raciest when brimmed with the element which most attracts 
their author, that of festive good-fellowship." — E. C. Stedman. 

Dr. Holmes has clearly expressed his own position on this 
point in one stanza of his famous poem " On Lending a 
Punch Bowl:" 

" I tell you there was generous warmth in good old English 
cheer ; 
I tell you 'twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here ; 
'Tis but the fool that loves excess — hast thou a drunken soul, 
Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl." 

" He has Pepys's hearty enjoyment of life — loves rowing, 
racing, trees, women, flowers, perfumes, and a well-furnished 
table."— W. S. Kennedy. 



HOLMES 843 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" Flash out a stream of blood-red wine, 
For I would drink to other days, 
And brighter shall their memory shine, 

Seen flaming through its crimson blaze ! 
The roses die, the summers fade, 

But every ghost of boyhood's dream 
By nature's magic power is laid 

To sleep beneath this blood-red stream ! " 

— Mare Rubrum. 



" This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, 
Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas 

chimes ; 
They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, 
That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was 
new." — On Lending a Punch Bowl. 

11 And yet, among my native shades, beside my nursing-mother, 
Where every stranger seems a friend, and every friend a 

brother, 
I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me stealing, — 
The warm, champagny, old-particular, brandy-punchy feeling." 

— Nux Postcoenatica. 

16. Power of Portraiture. — Holmes has shown himself 
a master in those single touches which, like the single strokes 
of the painter, cause a figure to stand out before us in bold 
relief. 

" He has few superiors in discernment of a man's individ- 
uality, however distinct that individuality may be from his 
own. ... I do not recall a more faithful and graphic 
outside portrait [essay on Emerson]. True, it was done by 
an artist who applies the actual eye, used for actual vision, to 
the elusive side of things, and who thinks little too immaterial 



844 HOLMES 

for the test of reason and science. . . . But it sets Em- 
erson before us in both his noon-day and sun-down moods ; 
in his character as a town-dweller and also as when he ' looked 
upon this earth as a visitor from another planet would look on 
it. ' " — E. C. S ted man. 

" [In " Before the Curfew "] he sketches for us portraits of 
Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, and Hawthorne which may 
well be placed beside any that have been drawn of these fa- 
vorites of New England's literary age. . . . [In his 
" Vignettes," the portraits of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, 
Moore, Dickens, Burns, etc.] his lines take hold of us like 
the grasp of a friendly hand." — G. E. Woodberry. 

" Certain types of New England characters are sketched in 
coarse raw pigment with great fidelity, but when the author is 
depicting his subordinate and ruder personages, you generally 
receive the impression of grotesque exaggeration and carica- 
ture. . . . He has an irresistible tendency to indulge 
in a kind of horse-play, a coarse realism of portraiture, to a 
great extent lacking in the subtle and delicate touch by which 
the great novelists reveal the hidden springs of feeling and 
nobleness, even in their least prominent characters." — W. S. 
Kennedy. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

" By the white neck-cloth, with its straightened tie, 
The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye, 
Severe and smileless, he that runs may read 
The stern disciple of Geneva's creed. 



A livelier bearing of the outward man, 

The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan, 

Now smartly raised or half profanely twirled, 

A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day world, 

Tell their plain story ; yes, thine eyes behold 

A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold." — Urafiia. 



HOLMES 845 

" Ah, gentlest soul ! how gracious, how benign 
Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine ! 
Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres, 
That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers, 
That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears." 

— To Longfellow. 

et The lark of Scotia's morning sky ! 

Whose voice may sing his praises ? 
With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye, 

He walked among the daisies, 
Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong 

He soared to fields of glory ; 
But left his land her sweetest song 

And earth her saddest story." — On Burns. ^ 



INDEX 



"Absalom and Achitophel" quot- 
ed, 142, 149, 152, 152, 155 
" Abt Vogler " quoted, 699 
Addison quoted, 76, 101, 119, 161 
" Address to a Mouse " quoted, 225 
"Address to Edinburgh" quoted, 

231 
"Address to the Unco Guid " 

quoted, 236 
"Adeline" quoted, 768 
" After a Tempest " quoted, 558 
" Afterthought " quoted, 474 
" Ages, 'I he, " quoted, 568, 571, 572 
Ainger, A., quoted, 7, 16 
" Alastor " quoted, 355 
Alcott, A. B., quoted, 504 
" Alexander's Feast " quoted, 147 
" Allegory, An," quoted, 341 
" Alphonso of Castile " quoted, 520 
" Amalri " quoted, 639 
" Amoretti " quoted, 84 
"Ancient Mariner, Rime of the," 

quoted, 424, 431, 431 
"Antiquity of Freedom, The," 

quoted, 551 
"Apparent Failure" quoted, 696, 

705 
" Appenines, To the," quoted, 562 
" A Prophecy " quoted, 327 
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 99, 112, 
115, 122, 301, 320, 325, 407, 463, 
468, 480, 486, 489, 503, 513, 516, 
519, 524, 528 
Arnold, Thos. , quoted, 391, 405 
"Artemisia" quoted, 188, 207 
" A Satire against Sedition " quoted, 

151. 151 
" Astraea Redux " quoted, 162 
"Atlantic Dinner, At the," quoted, 

820 
"A Tragic Fragment " quoted, 236 
" Aurengezebe, Prologue to," quot- 
ed, 160 
" Autocrat, Our," quoted, 749 
" Autumn " quoted, 643 
" Autumn Woods " quoted, 552 
" Autumnal Evening, Lines on an," 

quoted, 435 
" Aylmer's Field " quoted, 784, 790 



Bagehot, W., quoted, 116, 256, 

284, 34o, 343. 346, 348, 35o. 357. 

359, 3 6 8, 37o, 699, 782 
" Balaustion's Adventure " quoted, 

689 
" Ballad on Gentilesse " quoted, 23 
Bancroft, G., quoted, 504, 816 
"Banker's Dinner, The," quoted, 

825 
" Bannockburn " quoted, 231 
Bartol, C. A., quoted, 639, 654 
Bayne, P., quoted, 767, 793, 801, 

803 
" Beautie, An Hymne in Honour 

of," quoted, 72 
"Beauty, Ode to," quoted, 526 
Beecher, H. W., quoted, 248 
Beers, H. A., quoted, 719, 793, 797 
" Beggars, The Jolly," quoted, 227 
" Belfry of Bruges, The," quoted, 

641 
"Big Bellied Bottle, The," quoted, 

249 
Bigelow, J., quoted, 554, 570 
" Bigelow Papers " quoted, 597, 603 
" Bishop Orders His Tomb " quoted, 

701 
Blackie, J. S. , quoted, 224, 227, 230, 

238, 243 
Birrell, Augustine, quoted, 112, 180, 

187, 202, 687, 693 
" Blindness, Milton's Sonnet on his 

Own," quoted, 124 
" Blissful Day, The," quoted, 246 
"Blot in the Scutcheon" quoted, 

711 
" Boston " quoted, 514 
" Boston Hymn, The," 515 
" Botanist, The," quoted, 511 
Bowen, F., quoted, 824, 827 
Boyesen, H. H., quoted, 688, 816 
" Boys, The," quoted, 817 
" Branded Hand, The," quoted, 

738 
" Bridal of Pennacook, The," quot- 
ed, 750 
Brooke. Stopford, quoted, 8, 12, 18, 

26, 100, no, 112, 115, 122, 219, 

223, 230, 232, 241, 259, 269, 271, 



847 



848 



INDEX 



280, 286, 422, 426, 436, 441, 462, 
471, 477, 484, 488, 493, 494, 684, 
689, 694, 697, 704, 771, 779, 783, 
787, 803 
" Broomstick Train, The," quoted, 

827 
" Brothers, The," quoted, 480 
Browning, analysis of character by, 
682 ; argumentation, his fondness 
for, 706 ; bibliography of criticism 
on, 677-679 ; biographical outline 
of, 658-677 ; chaotic sentence 
structure of, 686 ; character, his 
analysis of, 682 ; characteristics of, 
679-713 ; cool satire of, 704 ; dra- 
matic power of, 708 ; earnestness 
of, 702 ; faith, his strong religious, 
697 ; fondness for monologue of, 
690 ; fondness for argumentation 
of, 706 ; fortitude, his robust, 693 ; 
grotesqueness of, 699 ; incongruity 
of, 699 ; intense vigor of, 679 ; in- 
trospection of, 682 ; inversion of, 
686 ; monologue, his fondness for, 
690 ; mastery of rhyme by, 712 ; 
obscurity of, 686 ; optimism of, 
693 ; quoted as critic, 352, 361 ; 
religious faith, his strong, 697 ; 
rhyme, his mastery of, 712 ; robust 
fortitude of, 693 ; satire, his cool, 
704 ; sentence structure, his chaot- 
ic, 686 ; soberness of, 702 ; strong 
faith of, 697 ; vigor, his intense, 

679 

Browning, Mrs., quoted, 101, 112, 
138, 159, 171, 265, 471, 473 

" Bryant, Whittier to," quoted, 749, 

" Building of the Ship, The," quoted, 
648 

Bryant, apostrophe, his fondness for, 
573 ; bibliography of criticism on, 
548-549 ; biographical outline of, 
520-548 ; calm trust of, in Provi- 
dence, 570; characteristics of, 549; 
correctness of, 562 ; dignity of, 
549 ; elevation of, 549 ; fondness of 
for apostrophe, 573 ; fulness of, 
560 ; genuineness of, 552 ; har- 
mony of, 568 ; majesty of, 559 ; 
meditation, his profound, 571 ; 
melody of, 568 ; melancholy, his 
pensive, 564 ; nationality of, 566 ; 
naturalness of, 552 ; nature, his 
sensibility to, 555 ; particular char- 
acteristics of, 549; patriotism of, 
566 ; pensive melancholy of, 564 ; 
precision of, 562 ; profound medi- 
tation of, 571 ; reserve of, 549 ; sen- 
sibility of, to nature, 555 ; serenity 
°f> 549 ! sincerity of, 552 ; sublim- 



ity of, 559 ; suggestiveness of, 560 ; 
tenderness of, 564 , trust of, in 
Providence, 570 ; sympathy, his 
broad human, 231 , tenderness of, 
222 ; vigor of, 225 ; warmth of af- 
fection, his, 244 
" Burial of the Minnisink" quoted, 

657 

" Burns, On " (Holmes), quoted, 845 

Burns, affection, his warmth of, 244 ; 
bibliography of criticism on, 216- 
218 ; biography of, 208-216 ; broad 
human sympathy of, 231 ; coarse- 
ness of, 247 ; conviviality of, 247 ; 
descriptive power of, 239 ; humor, 
his kindly, 242 ; indignation of, 
236 ; insight, moral of, 231 ; kindly 
humor of, 242 ; manliness of, 218 ; 
moral insight of, 231 ; naturalness 
of, 218 ; pathos of, 222 ; patriotism 
of, 228 ; picturesqueness of, 239 ; 
quoted as critic, 228 ; ridicule of, 
236 ; scorn of, 236 ; sensuality of, 
247 ; sincerity of, 218 ; spirit of, 
225 ; sportiveness of, 242 ; sublim- 
ity of, 249 

Burroughs, J., quoted, 504, 506, 507, 
510, 512, 522, 527 

Byron, abruptness of, 397 ; beauty, 
his thoughtful, 467 ; bibliography 
of criticism on, 383-385 ; biograph- 
ical outline of, 372-383 ; character- 
istics, his particular, 385-410 ; con- 
trast, his harsh, 397 ; depravity of, 
402; egotism of, 392; eloquence, 
his lofty, 408 ; grandeur of, 400 ; 
harsh contrast of, 397 ; intensity 
of, 385 ; invective, his power of, 
395 ; lofty eloquence of, 408 ; mag- 
nificence of, 400 ; malignity of, 
389 ; misanthropy of, 389 ; particu- 
lar characteristics of, 385-410 ; pas- 
sion of, 385 ; power of invective, 
his, 395 ; profligacy of, 402 ; quoted 
as critic, 310 ; self-revelation of, 
392 ; thoughtful beauty of, 407 

" Cain " quoted, 388, 402 

Caine, H., quoted, 312,422 

" Caliban upon Setebos " quoted, 

701 
Campbell, T., quoted, 85, 232, 241 
Carlyle quoted, 113, 218, 222, 226, 

228, 233, 236, 239, 242, 244, 248, 249, 

419, 444 
" Cassandra Southwick" quoted, 747 
" Castaway, The," quoted, 263 
Castelar, E. , quoted, 387, 390, 396 

398, 401, 407 
" Catawba Wine " quoted, 648 



INDEX 



849 



" Cenci, The," quoted, 360 
"Centennial Hymn " quoted, 744 
Chadwick, J. W. , quoted, 816, 826 
Chalmers, T. , quoted, 53 
" Chambered Nautilus, The," 832, 

835 

" Chamouni, Hymn in the Vale of," 
quoted, 421 

" Changeling, The," quoted, 603, 606 

Channing, W. E. , quoted, 101, 104, 
no, 116, 118, 120 

" Chanson without Music " quoted, 
842 

" Charity" (Cowper) quoted, 276 

" Charity " (Whittier) quoted, 738 

" Charles Sumner," Whittier on, 
quoted, 749 

" Charles the Second, Epistle to," 
quoted, 157 

" Chatterton, on the Death of," quot- 
ed, 421 

Chaucer, artlessness of, 5 ; bibliog- 
raphy of criticism on, 4-5 ; bio- 
graphical outline of, 1-3 ; charac- 
ter, his portrayal of, 31 ; character- 
istics of, 5-37 ; coarseness of, 36 ; 
elevation of character of, 21 ; love 
of nature, his, 17 ; genial humor of, 
11 ; freshness of, 5 ; humor, his 
genial, n ; kindly satire of, n ; 
liquid smoothness of, 8 ; minute- 
ness of, 27 ; naturalness of, 5 ; nar- 
rative power of, 24 ; nature, his 
love of, 17 ; pathos, his simple, 14 ; 
portrayal of character by, 31 ; real- 
ism of, 27 ; respect of, for wom- 
anhood, 16 ; satire, his kindly, 
11 ; simple pathos of, 14 ; single 
strokes of, 27 ; smoothness, his 
liquid, 8 ; sympathy of, with suffer- 
ing, 14 ; vividness of, 27 ; woman- 
hood, his respect for, 16 

Cheever, G. B. , quoted, 262, 265, 275, 
280 

Child, Professor, quoted, 83 

44 Childe Harold " quoted, 392, 394, 
395, 408, 409, 409 

*' Christabel " quoted, 425, 427, 428. 

435 
" Christening of a Friend's Child, On 

the," quoted, 442 
"Christmas Eve and Easter Day" 

quoted, 713 
Church, R. W., quoted, 48, 53, 58, 

61, 66, 73, 78, 82, 463, 466, 470, 480, 

485. 490, 493, 689 
11 Clerke's Tale, The," quoted, 8, 10, 

15 

44 Cloud, The," quoted, 356 
Coleridge, H., quoted, 141, 151 

54 



Coleridge, abstraction of, 443 ; as- 
similation by, 438 ; beauty, his im- 
aginative, 432; bibliography of 
criticism on, 418-419 ; biographical 
outline of, 411-417 ; characteristics, 
his peculiar, 419-451 ; confusion of, 
439; eloquence, his Miltonic, 419; 
finish of, 432 ; imaginative beauty 
of 432 ; imitation of, 438 ; lack of 
logical sequence, his 443 ; logical 
sequence, his lack of, 443 ; Milton- 
ic eloquence of, 419 ; musical ver- 
sification of, 425 ; obscurity of, 443 ; 
particular characteristics of, 419- 
451 ; picturesqueness of, 428 ; 
quoted as critic, 462, 471, 480, 481, 
490 ; realistic supernaturalism of, 
422 ; self-reflection of, 436 ; se- 
quence, his lack of logical, 443 ; 
seriousness of, 436 ; sublimity of, 
419 ; supernaturalism of, 422 ; ten- 
derness of, 430 ; unevenness of, 
439 ; versification, his musical, 425 
" Colin Clout's Come Home Again " 

quoted, 78, 84 
44 Columbus " quoted, 605 
Colvin, S., quoted, 315, 684, 706 
" Commemoration Ode " quoted, 

59i, 595 
" Compensation " quoted, 505, 509 
" Comus " quoted, 107, 116, 123 
Cone, H. G., quoted, 830 
" Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, 

The," quoted, 573 
" Contentment " quoted, 819, 830 
" Contrite Heart, The," quoted, 263 
" Conversation " quoted, 284 
Conway, M. D., quoted, 680, 689 
Cooke, G. W., quoted, 514,681, 692, 

701, 816, 828, 834 
"Corsair, The," quoted, 408 
" Cotter's Saturday Night, The," 

quoted, 231, 241 
" Courtin', The," quoted, 601, 607 
Courthope, W. J., quoted, 306, 309, 

315, 326, 354, 387. 39L 426, 444 
" Courtship of Miles Standish, The," 

quoted, 650, 652 
Cowper, allusions, his scriptural, 

283 ; biographical outline of, 252, 

255 ; bibliography of criticism on, 
255, 256 ; charateristics of, 256, 288 ; 
cheerful submissiveness of, 279 ; 
descriptive power, his minute, 

256 ; didacticism of, 277 ; fondness 
of, for seclusion, 259 ; fantastic 
humor of, 272 ; genuineness of, 
285 ; gloominess of, 262 ; humor, 
his fantastic, 272 ; love of nature, 
his, 264 ; minute descriptive power 



8so 



INDEX 



of, 256 ; morality, his unconven- 
tional, 277 ; naturalness of, 285 ; 
nature, his love of, 264 ; patriot- 
ism of, 271 ; piety of, 279 ; quoted 
as critic, 274, 275, 280 ; satire, his 
theoretical, 267 ; scriptural allu- 
sions of, 283 ; sensitive tenderness 
of, 275 ; seclusion, his fondness 
for, 259 ; shyness of, 259 ; simplic- 
ity of, 285 ; sportiveness of, 272 ; 
submissiveness, his cheerful, 279 ; 
sympathy of, 275 ; tenderness, his 
sensitive, 257 ; theoretical satire 
of, 267 ; unconventional morality 
of, 277 

" Craggs, Ode on James," quoted, 
184 

Craik, G. L. , quoted, 78, 138, 241 

" Cristina " quoted, 703 

Cromwell, stanzas on, quoted, 140 

" Crowded Street, The," quoted, 

565 
" Cuckoo, The," quoted, 489 
" Cuckoo and the Nightingale, 

The," quoted, 21 
*' Culture " quoted, 524 
Curtis, G. W., quoted, 553, 556, 563, 

564, 566, 584, 587, 597, 611, 614, 

631, 634, 648, 650, 653, 817, 831, 

836 

" Daffodils, The," quoted, 472 
" Damsel of Peru, The," quoted, 

569 
Dana, R. H. , quoted, 557 
" Dandelion, To the," quoted, 593 
Daniel quoted, 78 
" Daphnaida " quoted, 56 
Dawson, G. , quoted, 259, 262, 278, 

281, 285 
Dawson, W. J., quoted, 791, 801 
" Day is Done, The," quoted, 639 
" Death of Schiller, The," quoted, 

56i 
" Dejection : An Ode " quoted, 438 
DeQuincey quoted, 173, 178, 187, 

192, 196, 199, 203, 205, 310, 317, 

35i. 359, 363. 439, 440, 445, 447 
" Destiny of Nations, The," quoted, 

421, 425, 446,451 
DeVere, A., quoted, 71, 466, 484, 

490, 494 
" Devil's Walk, The," quoted, 350 
" Digby, Ode to Robert," quoted, 

184 
Dobson, A., quoted, 347, 355 
" Don Juan " quoted, 392, 399, 400, 

406 
" Dora " quoted, 804 
" Dorothy Q " quoted, 819 



Dowden, E. , quoted, 46, 63, 67, 71, 
106, ii2, 120, 341, 346, 350, 354, 
361, 3 6 4. 3 6 8. 37o, 393, 423. 426, 
429. 430. 434. 438, 440, 445. 473, 
526, 687, 694, 787, 799 
" Down in the City " quoted, 707 
" Dream of Fair Women, A.," quot- 
ed, 768 
Dryden, bibliography of criticism 
on, 136, 137 ; biographical out- 
line of, 131, 136 ; adulation of, 155 ; 
argument, his specious, 153 ; bit- 
ing satire of, 140 ; bold personal 
portraiture of, 147 ; bombast of, 
155 ; characteristics of, 137, 162 ; 
coarseness of, 157 ; cold intellectu- 
ality of, 137 ; cool satire of, 140 ; 
directness of, 149 ; emotion, his 
lack of, 137 ; excessive panegyric 
of, 155 ; incisiveness of, 149 ; in- 
tellectuality of, 137 ; masculine 
vigor of, 149 ; metrical skill of, 
143 ; panegyric, excessive, of, 155 ; 
pedantry of, 159 ; personal por- 
traiture of, 147 ; portraiture, bold 
personal of, 147 ; satire, cool of, 
140 ; sensuality of, 157 ; skill, his 
metrical, 143 ; specious argument 
of, 153 ; vanity of, 159 ; vigor, 
masculine, of, 149 
Dryden's lines on his portrait 

quoted, 162 
" Duddon, The River," quoted, 495 
" Duchess of York, Epistle to the," 

quoted, 157 
" Dunciad, The," quoted, 189, 195 
" Duty, Ode to,'' quoted, 495 
" Dying Christian to His Soul, 
The," quoted, 176 

" Each and All " quoted, 517 

" Earth " quoted, 554 

"Earth's Immortalities" quoted, 

705 

" E. L., To," quoted, 792 

" Elegiac Verse " (Longfellow) quot- 
ed, 643 

"Elegy on the Year 1788" quoted, 

244 

" Eleonora " quoted, 160 

Emerson, Americanism of, 514 ; ap- 
preciation of nature, his, 515 ; 
bibliography of, criticism on, 501- 
503 ; biographical outline of, 497- 
501 ; characteristics of, 503-529 ; 
conciseness of, 509 ; condensation 
of, 509 ; crudity, his frequent, 518 ; 
elevation, moral of, 505 ; frequent 
crudity of, 518 ; individuality of. 
507,; intellectuality of, 523 ; lack of 



INDEX 



851 



logical sequence, 527 ; logical se- 
quence, lack of, 527 ; lyric power 
of, 520 ; moral elevation of, 505 ; 
mysticism of, 512 ; nature, his ap- 
preciation of. 515 ; obscurity of, 
512 ; optimism of, 503 ; particular 
characteristics of, 503-529 ; preci- 
sion of, 521 ; quoted as critic, 219, 
229, 237, 553, 778; sequence, his 
lack of logical, 527; serenity of, 
503 ; sincerity of, 507 ; spontaneity 
of, 520 ; suggestiveness of, 523 ; 
transcendentalism of, 524 ; whole- 
someness of, 503 

'Endymion" (Longfellow's), quot- 
ed, 633 

' Endymion " quoted, 304, 310, 311, 
319, 324, 324, 324, 326 

4 England in 1819 " quoted, 357 

* English Bards and Scotch Review- 
ers " quoted, 397 

' Enoch Arden " quoted, 784, 790, 
804 

' Epipsychidion " quoted, 341 

' Epistle to a Lady," Pope's, quot- 
ed, 207 

1 Epistle, The," quoted, 702 

1 Epistle to Davie " quoted, 221, 
246 

4 Epistle to the Rev. John McMath " 
quoted, 221, 222 

1 Epithalamion " quoted, 50, 60, 71 

1 Essay on Criticism " quoted, 174, 
197, 198, 199, 203, 203, 205 

4 Essay on Man " quoted, 172, 197, 
201, 201, 205 

'Eternal Goodness, The," quoted, 

735 
4 Evangeline " quoted, 633, 651, 653 
4 Evening Wind, To the," quoted, 

563 
Everett, E., quoted, 553 
'Excursion, The," quoted, 463, 481, 

481, 485, 494 
' Expostulation " quoted, 272, 278 

4 Fable for Critics, A," quoted, 586, 

596, 598, 600 
' Faery Queene, The," quoted, 51, 

56, 61, 65, 70, 72, 77, 77, 82, 82, 84, 

87 
4 Familiar Letter, A," quoted, 823 
4 Fatherland, The," quoted, 591 
' Farewell, Burns's, to his Native 

Country," quoted, 246 
4 Farewell to Agassiz, A," quoted, 

827 
Farrar, F. W., quoted, 696, 786 
4 Fears in Solitude" quoted, 430, 

438 



Felton, C. C, quoted, 516, 518, 523, 
526, 648, 770 

44 Fenton, Mr. Elijah, Pope's Ode 
on," quoted, 184 

44 Festina Lente " quoted, 594 

44 Fill the Goblet Again " quoted, 406 

44 First Advent of Love " quoted, 436 

44 First Fan, The," quoted, 831 

44 First Snow-Fail, The," quoted, 603 

Fiske, J., quoted, 652 

44 Fitz Adam's Story " quoted, 595, 
598, 609 

" Flight of the Duchess, The," quot- 
ed, 693, 712 

44 Forbearance " quoted, 524 

Foster, J., quoted, 449 

44 France" quoted, 439 

44 Fox, On the Death of Mr. ," quoted, 

397 
4 'Fra Lippo Lippi " quoted, 686, 

693. 697, 706 
44 Frankeleyn's Tale, The," quoted, 24 
44 Frost at Midnight " quoted, 431 
Frothingham, O. B., quoted, 637, 834 
44 Fu' Sweet that Day " quoted, 242 
Furness, W. H., quoted, 816 

44 Gardener's Daughter, The," 

quoted, 772 
Gay, Epitaph on, quoted, 174 
" Geraint and Enid " quoted, 784 
44 Giaour, The," quoted, 388, 410 
Gilder, R. W. , quoted, 740, 743, 822 
Gladstone, W. E., quoted, 787, 789 
44 Glance Behind the Curtain, A," 

quoted, 589 
"Gleam of Sunshine, A," quoted, 

638, 639 
44 God's Acre " quoted, 655 
Godwin, W., quoted, 31 
Godwin, P., quoted, 338, 343, 351, 

353, 356, 3 6l > 365. 37i, 55i, 552, 556, 

559, 561, 563. 564, 566, 570, 572 
Goethe quoted, 391, 407 
4 ' Good-Bye " quoted, 517 
44 Good Counsoil " quoted, 24 
Gosse, E., quoted, 144. 148, 150, 159, 

171, 179, 188, 204, 303, 340, 365 
>4 Grace " quoted, 505 
44 Granville, Mr., Epistle to," quoted, 

153 
44 Grecian Urn, Ode to a," quoted 

3°4, 3°9 
Green, J. R., quoted, 34 
" Green Linnet, The," quoted, 490, 
44 Green River " quoted, 552, 569, 
Greene, J. R. , quoted, 269 
Grimm quoted, 523 
Griswold, R. W., quoted, 741 
" Guinevere," quoted, 794 



852 



INDEX 



Hale, E. E., quoted, 818, 834 
Halleck, F. G, quoted, 220, 235 
" Harvard Alumni, To the, " 826 
" Hastings, On the Death of Lord," 

quoted, 157 
Haweis, H. R., quoted, 20, 22, 29, 

585, 588, 590, 604, 608, 654 
Hawthorne, J., quoted, 504, 513 
Hazlitt, Wm., quoted, 7, 9, 14, 19, 
23, 27, 32, 46, 64, 81, 86, 100, 104, 
107, no, 112, 120, 121, 139, 142. 177, 
195, 196, 200, 220, 224, 248, 250, 260, 
268, 394, 399, 408, 420, 423, 426, 429, 
435, 444, 447, 473, 482, 485, 488, 490, 
494 
41 Heaven and Earth " quoted, 402 
"Heavenly Love, An Hymne of," 

quoted, 69 
" Hebe " quoted, 614 
44 Hellas " quoted, 344, 367, 368 
Henley, W. E., quoted, 777 
" Hiawatha" quoted, 646 
Higginson, T. W., quoted, 510, 516, 

727, 737, 7SO, 752 
"Hind and Panther, The," quoted, 

154 

11 Hive at Gettysburg, The," quoted 
752 

Holmes, adaptability of, 839 ; badi- 
nage, his graceful, 822 ; bibliogra- 
phy of criticism on, 814-815 ; bio- 
graphical outline of, 805-814 ; 
buoyancy of, 815 ; characteristics 
of, 805-845 ; colloquial habit of, 
817 ; conservatism of, 838 ; conviv- 
iality of, 842 ; dazzling wit of, 824 ; 
earnestness of, 834 ; epigram of, 
830 ; exuberant wit of, 824 ; fa- 
miliarity of, 817 ; fanciful humor 
of, 826 ; fancy, his sportive, 830 ; 
graceful badinage of, 822 ; honesty 
of, 832 ; humor, his fanciful, 826 ; 
localism of, 836 ; manliness of, 832 ; 
occasionalism of, 839 ; optimism of, 
815 ; paradox, his whimsical, 830 ; 
particular characteristics of, 815- 
845 ; pathos of, 828 ; piquant satire 
of, 822 ; point of, 830 ; portraiture, 
his power of, 843 ; purpose, his se- 
rious, 834 ; quaintness of, 838 ; 
quoted as critic, 12, 223, 234, 302, 
505, 512, 518, 522, 525, 528, 569, 592, 
592, 645, 647, 647, 655, 730, 733, 
834 ; satire, his piquant, 822 ; sec- 
tionalism of, 836 ; self-revelation 
of, 817 ; serious purpose of, 834 ; 
simple treatment of weighty 
themes by, 820 ; sincerity of, 832 ; 
sportive fancy of, 830 ; weighty 
themes, his treatment of, 820 ; 



whimsical paradox of, 830 ; wit, his 

exuberant, 824 ; unconventionality 

of, 820 ; youthfulness of, 815 
41 Holy Fair, The," quoted, 238 
" Holy Willie's Prayer " quoted, 239, 
" Hope " quoted, 279 
Home, R. H., quoted, 470, 477,688, 

696, 769, 776 
" How the Old Horse Won the Bet " 

quoted, 830 
Howells, W. D., quoted, 819, 820, 

828, 840 
" How it Strikes a Contemporary " 

quoted, 686 
Howitt, W., quoted, 31, 281, 326, 

399, 407, 408, 776, 787, 799 
Hudson, H. N., quoted, 463, 477 
" Human Frailty " quoted, 283 
Hume quoted, 76, 101 
Hunt, L. , quoted, 49, 59, 64, 77, 86, 

3°2, 305, 307, 311, 324, 352, 354 
44 Hurricane, The," quoted, 560 
Hutton, R. H., quoted, 339, 342, 

345. 347, 35°. 358, 3t>3, 370, 462, 
466, 475, 477, 482, 488, 678, 683, 
686, 691, 694, 702, 767, 770, 776, 
786, 791, 792, 796, 799 
44 Hymn of the City " quoted, 571 
41 Hymn to Death " quoted, 562 
Hymn on the Morning of Chuist's 

Nativity" quoted, 103, 105, 123 
" Hymn to my Fire " quoted, 586 
" Hyperion " quoted, 311, 316 

Iliad, Pope's translation, quoted, 

175 
" // Penseroso " quoted, 105, 121 
44 Imitations of Horace " quoted, 

199 
44 Immortality, Ode on," quoted, 479 
41 Impromptu " quoted, 476 
" Indian Summer Reverie, An," 

quoted, 594 
" Indian Summer, Our," quoted, 841 
" Initial Love, The," quoted, 520 
44 In Memoriam " quoted, 772, 772, 

788, 790, 791, 801 
44 In the Evil Days" quoted, 738 
44 Iron Gate, The," quoted, 829 
Irving, W., quoted, 555, 561, 564, 

567 
44 1 Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little 

Hill " quoted, 307, 316 
"It Is not Always May" quoted, 

632 

James, H., quoted, 506, 526, 587, 
604, 611, 695, 698, 702, 709 

Jeffrey, F. , quoted, 181, 222, 237, 
240, 247, 250, 259, 275, 286, 305, 



INDEX 



853 



308, 314, 317, 386, 389, 398, 401, 
404, 407, 485, 486 

w John Gilpin's Ride " quoted, 274 

Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 101, 109, 
112, 115, 118, 119, 122, 126, 138, 
143, 158, 159, 171, 186, 189, 196, 
202 

Johnson, O. , quoted, 739 

"Jolly Beggars, The," quoted, 249 

Jonson, B., quoted, 78 

" ]. W., To," quoted, 507 

Keats, bibliography of criticism 
on, 298-300 ; biographical outline 
of, 289-298 ; beauty, his love of, 
300 ; characteristics of, 300-327 ; 
deep pathos of, 312 ; delicate fancy 
of, 305 ; exuberant imagery of, 307 ; 
fancy, his delicate, 305 ; felicity, 
his, in expression, 325 ; imagery, 
his exuberant, 307 ; imagination, 
his sympathetic, 305 ; invention, 
his mythological, 314; love of 
beauty, his, 300; magnificence 
of, 310 ; melody of, 325 ; mysti- 
cism oi, 317 ; mythological inven- 
tion of, 314 ; particular character- 
istics of, 300-327 ; pathos, his deep, 
312 ; quoted as critic, 312 ; sensi- 
tiveness of, 319 ; sensuousness of, 
319 ; splendor of, 310 ; sympa- 
thetic imagination of, 305 ; vague- 
ness of, 317 

Keble, J., quoted, 68 

Kennedy, W. S., quoted, 510, 726, 
732, 739, 743, 745, 75°, 75 1, 819, 
820, 822, 825, 826, 828, 836, 838, 
840, 842, 844 

44 Kilchurn Castle, Address to," 
quoted, 496 

41 Killigrew, Ode to Mrs. Anne," 
quoted, 162 

Kingsland, W. G., quoted, 696, 698 

Kingsley, Chas., quoted, 200, 221, 
222, 249, 351, 365, 370, 404, 770, 797 

" Knightes Tales, The," quoted, 10, 
15, 21, 26, 30 

" Know Thyself" quoted, 437 

" La Belle Dame sans Merci " quot- 
ed, 318 
" Lady Byron, To," quoted, 388 
44 Lady of Shalott, The," quoted, 798 
" Lady, To a," quoted, 486 
Lamb, C., quoted, 44, 447 
" Lancelot and Elaine " quoted, 803 
"Lamia 1 ' quoted, 316 
Landor, W. S., quoted, 405 
Lang, Andrew, quoted, 175, 219, 227, 
24 8 , 339- 03 1 , 6 45, 680, 684 



Lathrop, G. P., quoted, 824 

44 Last Leaf. The," quoted, 827 

" Legend of St. Mark, The," quoted, 

747 
44 Lewti " quoted, 428 
" Liberty, Ode to," quoted, 366 
" Liberty, Sonnets to," quoted, 479 
41 Life " quoted, 511 
44 Light of Stars, The," quoted, 646 
44 Light Woman, A," quoted, 692 
,4 Lincluden Abbey, Verses on," 

quoted, 251 
" Lines to a Critic " quoted, 367 
" Living Lost, The," quoted, 566, 573 
Lockhart, J. G., quoted, 229, 235 
44 Locksley Hall " quoted, 780 
Lodge, H. C, quoted, 840 
Longfellow, artistic fidelity of, 630 ; 
assimilation of, 642 ; beauty, his 
perception of, 632 ; bibliography 
of criticism on, 629-630; biograph- 
ical outline of, 616-628 ; bookish- 
ness of, 640 ; characteristics of, 
630-657 ; commonplace of, 644 ; 
didacticism of, 644 ; erudition of, 
640 ; finish of, 630 ; flexibility of, 
646 ; grace of, 636 ; humanity of, 
634 ; imagery, his labored, 650 ; 
imitation of, 642 ; labored imagery 
of, 650 ; lyric power of, 646 ; mild- 
ness of, 636 ; mild religious ear- 
nestness of, 653 ; naturalness of, 
655 ; occasional vigor of, 651 ; 
quoted as critic, 233, 240, 245, 740 ; 
narrative power of, 649 ; optimism 
of, 653 ; perception of beauty by, 
632 ; profuse imagery of, 650 ; re- 
ligious earnestness, his mild, 653 ; 
repose of, 638 ; revery of, 638 ; 
sentiment of, 636 ; simplicity of, 
655 ; stock morality of, 644 ; sym- 
pathy of, 634 ; tenderness of, 634 , 
trust of, 653 ; variety of, 646 ; vigor, 
his occasional, 651 
44 Longfellow, To," quoted, 845; 
" Lost Leader, The," quoted, 681, 

703 
Lounsbury, T. R., 7, 9, 24, 139, 146, 

ISO 
44 Love and Duty " quoted, 802 
44 Love's Philosophy " quoted, 371 
Low, Sidney, quoted, 590, 604, 612 
Lowell, allusiveness of, 582 ; appre- 
ciation of nature by, 591 ; bibliog- 
raphy of criticism on, 581-582 , 
brilliancy of, 596 ; biographical 
outline of, 574-580 ; characteristics 
of, 582-615 ; classical finish of, 613 ; 
culture of, 582 ; deep religious in- 
stinct of, 604 ; didacticism of, 589; 



854 



INDEX 



erudition of, 582 ; faith in human 
nature of, 608 ; finish, his classical, 
613 ; human nature, his knowledge 
of, 608 ; humorous satire of, 596 ; 
idyllic power of, 606 ; independ- 
ence of, 587 ; knowledge of human 
nature of, 608 ; manliness of, 587 ; 
melody of, 613 ; nationalism of, 
610 ; nature, his appreciation of, 
591 ; particular characteristics of, 
582-615 ; portraiture, his skill in, 
594 ; pathos of, 601 ; quoted as 
critic, 5, 8, 11, 14, 18, 22, 25, 27, 31, 
37, 44, 52, 57, 62, 67, 73, 80, 85, 
102, 103, 109, in, 117, 124, 138, 141, 
145, iSi, 154, 158, 159, 161, 170, 
1 73> *78, 183, 186, 206, 300, 305, 
308, 310, 320, 325, 426, 428, 433, 
450, 462, 472, 474, 477, 480, 484, 
505, 523. 528, 550, 587, 589, 630, 
634, 651, 705, 708, 730, 739, 741, 
746, 750, 777, 821, 823, 824, 826 ; 
religious instinct, his deep, 604 ; 
satire, humorous, of, 596 ; section- 
alism of, 610 ; sincerity of, 587 ; 
skill in portraiture of, 594 ; wit of, 
598 
" Luria '' quoted, 711 

Mabie, H. W., quoted, 303, 306, 

3°9. 3 2 3- 325. 681 , 683 

Macaulay quoted, 75, 102, 103, 123, 

139, 145, 148, 154. 155. 158, 161, 

229, 259, 354, 387, 3*9, 393, 404, 

470 

MacDonald, G., quoted, 348, 352, 

359 
" MacFlecknoe " quoted, 143 
41 Maidenhood " quoted, 632 
" Manfred " quoted, 401 
" Mantle of St. John De Matha, 

The," quoted, 747 
" Marchantes Tale, The," quoted, 17 
" Mare Rubrutn " quoted, 843 
" Margaret " quoted. 768 
" Margaret, The Affliction of,' 

quoted, 492 
" Mariana " quoted, 798 
Martineau, J., quoted, 443 
" Mary, To," quoted, 277 
" Mary Queen of Scots, Lament of," 

quoted, 492 
" Masque of Anarchy, The," quoted, 

358 
Masson, D., quoted, 103, 112, 122, 

124, 138, 144, 3°7, 3°9, 3 J 4. 326, 

339- 354. 3 68 - 470, 473- 482, 490 
" Maternal Grief " quoted, 467, 491 
Mathews, B., quoted, 656 
" Maud," quoted, 778, 780, 792 



" May Queen, The," quoted, 147 
Mazzini quoted, 391, 394, 400 
"Medical Dinner, At a," quoted, 

839 
" Medal, The," quoted, 143, 149 
" Melancholy, Ode on," quoted, 310 
"Men of England, To the," quoted, 

353 
"Merlin and Vivian " quoted, 798 
" Merlin " quoted, 523, 529 
" Mesmerism " quoted, 689 
" Messiah, The," quoted, 182 
Mill, J. S., quoted, 438, 448 
Milton, adaptation of sound to sense 
by, 121 ; amplitude of, 108 ; bibliog- 
raphy of criticism on, 96, 98 ; bio- 
graphical outline of, 89, 95 ; char- 
acteristics of, 99, 130 ; concord of, 
103 ; contradiction of, 126 ; dignity 
of, 123 ; egoism of, 111 ; equanim- 
ity of, 123 ; harmony of, 103 ; in- 
congruity of, 126 ; inspiration, con- 
scious, of, in ; intellectuality of, 
119; learning, profound, of, 119; 
love of natural beauty by, 105 ; 
majesty of, 99 ; moral elevation of, 
113 ; quoted as critic, 44, 106, 113, 
114, 119, 479 ; unnaturalness of, 
126 ; picturesqueness of, 105 ; pro- 
found learning of, 119 ; purity of, 
113 ; serene dignity of, 123 ; sub- 
limity of, 99 ; vastness of, 108 
Minto, W. , quoted, 7, 11, 16, 18, 25, 

33, 3 6 > 49. 55. 59. 76 
Mitford, J., quoted, 148, 154, 161 
Mitford, M. R., quoted, 303, 746, 

838 
" Modest Request, A," quoted, 830 
" Monadnoc " quoted, 526 
" Monke's Tale, The," quoted, 14 
Montague, Lady Mary W., quoted, 

188 
Moore, Thos. , quoted, 394, 398 
" Mortturi Salutamus " quoted, 641 
Morse, J. S. , quoted, 816, 819, 825, 

835. 836, 838 
" Moral Essays " quoted, 174, 198 
" Moral Warfare, The," quoted, 740 
Morley, H., quoted, 13, 16, 34, 59 
Morley, J., quoted, 402, 409, 508, 

519, 527, 68o, 700, 702 
" Mother's Picture, On the Receipt 

of My," quoted, 276 
11 Muipotmos " quoted, 65 
" Music " quoted, 347 
"My Lost Duchess " quoted, 685 
" My Aunt " quoted, 823 

"Nameless Grave, A.," quoted, 
635 



INDEX 



855 



" Namesake, My," quoted, 735, 736 
" Nature " (Emerson) quoted, 517 
" Nature " (Longfellow) quoted, 637 
" New England Society, To the," 

quoted, 837 
" Newfoundland Dog, Epitaph on 

a," quoted, 392 
"Nightingale, Ode to a" (Keats), 

quoted, 313 
"Nightingale, To the" (Cowper), 

quoted, 288 
Noel, R. , quoted, 712 
" Nonne Preestes Tale, The," 

quoted, 8, 13, 30 
Norton, C. E. , quoted, 506, 512, 518, 

521, 584, 593. 597 
" Nutting " quoted, 483 
" Nux Postcoentia " quoted, 843 



"Ode for the Fourth of July, An," 
quoted, 613 

44 Ode on Solitude," Pope's, quoted, 
172 

44 Oenone " quoted, 778 

" Oh Mother of a Mighty Race " 
quoted, 568 

44 Old Cambridge " quoted, 837 

Oldham, Lines to, by Uryden, quot- 
ed, 140 

" Old South Church, An Appeal 
for," quoted, 839 

Oliphant, Mrs., quoted, 262 

"On a Dream " quoted, 317 

" Once More " quoted, 842 

" On Lending a Punch Bowl " quot- 
ed, 833, 839, 842, 843 

44 On Scaring Some Water-fowl " 
quoted, 225 

" On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp 
By " quoted, 225 

" On the Sea" quoted, 311 

44 On the Young Statesman " quoted, 
152 

" Open Window, The," quoted, 637 

Orr, Mrs. S., quoted, 706 

Ossoli, Margaret F. , quoted, 343, 
346, 35 l < 3 62 

11 Our Banker " quoted. 817 

" Our Country " quoted, 745 

" Our State " quoted, 744 



" Pacchiarotto " quoted, 705 
Palgrave, F. , quoted, 9 
Pancoast, H. S., quoted, 15, 20 
" Paradise Lost " quoted, 102, 102, 
105, 108, 108, no, no, in, 113, 
113, 113, 117, 118, 118, 121, 121, 122, 
125, 129, 130, 130 



44 Park, The," quoted, 505, 522 
Parkman, F., quoted, 741 
44 Parlement of Foules, The," quot- 
ed, 21, 30 
44 Parson Turell's Legacy " quoted, 

837 
44 Passing of Arthur, The," quoted, 

793 
" Pastoral Letter, The," quoted, 732 
Paten, W., 424, 428, 430, 433, 437, 

462, 465, 475, 480. 490, 493 
Pattison, Mark, quoted, 99, 107, 115, 

120, 171, 173, 174, 181, 183. 185, 197, 

200, 206 
" Peter Bell " quoted, 488 
44 Peter Bell the Third " quoted, 349 
14 Pet Lamb, The," quoted, 464 
Phelps, E. S., quoted, 733, 737, 752 
" Playmate, My," quoted, 753 
Poe, E. A., quoted, 568, 631, 640, 643, 

645. 778 

11 Poetry " quoted, 821 

Pope, artificiality of, 177 ; balance of, 
173 ; bibliography of criticism on, 
168-170 ; biographical outline of, 
163-168 ; brilliance of, 196 ; coarse- 
ness of. 184 ; conciseness of, 170 , 
contempt of, for womanhood, 205 ; 
conventional morality of, 199 ; crit- 
icism, his skill in, 198 ; delicate 
skill of, in criticism, 198 ; elegance 
of, 196 ; epigram of, 173 ; erudi- 
tion of, 202 ; exactness of, 170 ; 
faith, his religious, 199 ; fragmen- 
tariness of, 203 ; gracefulness of, 
196 ; individuality of, 183 ; insin- 
cerity of, 189 ; learning, his wide, 

202 ; logical sequence, his lack of, 

203 ; malignity of, 184 ; meanness 
of, 184 ; melody of, 174 ; morality, 
his conventional, 199 ; point of, 
173 ; portraiture of, 183 ; quoted as 
critic, 145, 170; religious faith of, 
199 ; sequence, his lack of logical, 
203 ; skill of, in criticism, 198 ; 
terseness of, 170 ; vanity of, 189 ; 
vivid portraiture of, 183 ; wide 
learning of, 202 ; womanhood, his 
contempt for, 205 

41 Prairies, The," quoted, 568 

44 Praise of Women, A," quoted, 17 

44 Pregnant Comment, The," quoted, 

586 
44 Prelude, The," quoted, 468, 471, 

47i. 474. 493 
44 Present Crisis, The," quoted, 539, 

59i 
44 Princess, The," quoted, 788 
44 Problem, The," quoted, 509 
Procter, B. W., quoted, 450 



856 



INDEX 



"Progress of Error, The," quoted, 

270 
" Prologue to Canterbury Tales" 

quoted, 8, 14, 35, 36, 36 
11 Prometheus Unbound " quoted, 

369 
" Prometheus " (Lowell) quoted, 610 
11 Prospice " quoted, 681 
11 Prothalamion " quoted, 65 
Prothero, R. E. .quoted, 831 
" Psyche, Ode to," quoted, 307 
" Punishment of Death, Sonnets 

on," quoted, 494 

Quarterly Review quoted, 278 
"Queen Mab " quoted, 344, 349, 
352, 3&3* 3 6 4 

" Rabbi Ben Ezra " quoted, 696, 

699. 703, 707 
41 Rape of the Lock, The," quoted, 

176, 182, 207 
" Rainbow, The," quoted, 474 
•' Reaper and the Flowers, The," 

quoted, 635 
u Reaper, The Solitary," quoted, 

476 
" Redbreast, The," quoted, 485 
" Reeve's Tale, The," quoted, 26 
" Religio Laici" quoted, 140, 155 
" Religious Musings" quoted, 430, 

446 
"Reminiscences" (Keats) quoted, 

307 
" Residence at Cambridge " quoted, 

464 
"Resignation " quoted, 655 
" Retired Cat, The," quoted, 287, 
" Retirement " quoted, 261, 284 
" Reverie " quoted, 614 
" Revisited " quoted, 750 
" Revolt of Islam, The," quoted, 

3 6 °- 37i 
Richardson, C. F. , quoted, 312, 505, 

506, 508, 510, 513, 515, 518, 520, 

524, 528, 550, 557, 559, 565, 571, 

584, 612, 635, 726, 734, 737, 743, 

752, 818 
" Ring and the Book, The," quoted, 

682 
" Rip Van Winkle, M.D.," quoted, 

P25, 833 
" River Path, The," quoted, 754 
" Rivulet," quoted, 565 
" Rizpah " quoted, 780, 794 
Robertson, E. S. , quoted, 637 
Robertson, J. C. , quoted, 12, 21 
Robertson, J. M., quoted, 793 
•' Rose and Fern, The," quoted, 822 



Rosetti, D G , quoted, 312 
Rossetti, W. M., quoted, 7, 12, 67, 
81, 101, 104, 122, 141, 146, 151, 159, 
181, 230, 245, 268, 275, 301, 306, 
308, 323, 340, 343, 366, 396, 426, 
439, 466, 473 
" Ruienes of Time, The," quoted, 87 
" Rural Architecture " quoted, 487 

" Saadi " quoted, 524 

" Sabbath Scene, A," quoted, 732 

" Sacrifice " quoted, 507 

"Saga of King Olaf, The," quoted, 
649 

Saintsbury, G. , quoted, 50, 64, 68, 
80, 85, 139. 141, 145, 147, 150, 153, 
158, 681, 767, 770, 774 

Sanborn, F. B., quoted, 512, 519 

" Satires," Prologue to Pope's, quot- 
ed, 101, 195 

"Satires," Pope's, quoted, 195 

" Saul " quoted, 699 

Savage, W. H., quoted, 506 

Scherer, E. , quoted, 99, 103, 112, 116, 
119, 124, 126, 387, 394, 463, 467, 
471. 477, 480, 485, 493, 775 

" Scotch Drink " quoted, 249 

Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, to, 44, 
141, 143, 148, 150, 152, 154, 154, 
158, 161, 237, 243, 386, 394, 400, 

405. 407 

Scudder, H. E., quoted, 631, 638, 
640, 642, 650, 652, 836 

"Sea Dream, A," quoted, 753 

" Sensitive Plant, The," quoted, 
355. 360 

Shairp, J. C, quoted, 19, 119, 219, 
223, 225, 229, 231, 239, 243, 247, 
342, 346, 348, 359- 3 6 4. 3 6 9, 426, 
435. 437, 448, 462, 466, 469, 477, 
482, 488, 490 

Shelley, acute sensibility of, 350 ; 
awelessness of, 347 ; biographical 
outline of, 328-335 ; bibliography 
of criticism on, 335-338 ; character- 
istics of, 338-371 ; curiosity of, 
347 ; desire, his intellectual, 345 ; 
faith in humanity, his, 368 ; fear- 
lessness of, 361 ; high ideals of, 
361 ; horrible, the. his taste for, 
358 ; idealism of, 338 ; imagina- 
tive power, his rare, 353 ; impul- 
siveness of, 369 ; independence of, 
364 ; intellectual desire of, 345 ; 
intensity of, 356 ; irreverence of, 
347 ; lawlessness of, 364 ; liberty, 
his love of, 364 ; love of liberty, 
his, 364 ; lyrical rapture of, 342 ; 
mysticism of, 338 ; optimism of, 
368 ; particular characteristics of, 



INDEX 



857 



338-371 ; quoted as critic, 311, 
35 1. 445 : rapture, his lyrical, 342 ; 
rare imaginative power of, 353; 
sensibility, his acute, 350 ; sensual- 
ism of, 369 ; sincerity of, 361 ; 
subtlety of, 338 ; sympathy of, 350 ; 
taste for the horrible, his, 358 ; 
thirst of, 345 ; yearning of, 345 
" Shepheard's Calendar, The," quot- 
ed, 50, 56, 60, 81 
" Shoemakers, The," quoted, 738 
" Shrubbery, The," quoted, 264 
"Siege of Corinth, The," quoted, 

408 
" Simon Lee " quoted, 487 
41 Simplon, The," quoted, 483 
"Sir Fopling Flutter" quoted, 149 
Skeat, W, quoted, 22 
" Skeleton in Armor, The," quoted, 

653 

" Sketch, A," quoted, 396 

" Skinner, Milton to Cyriack," quot- 
ed, 125 

u Skylark, To a " (Shelley), quoted, 
344, 347 

"Skylark, To a "(Wordsworth), 
quoted, 489 

" Sleep, To," quoted, 476 

" Sludge the Medium," quoted, 710 

Smith, A., quoted, 25, 29 

Smith, Goldwin, quoted, 256, 267, 
271, 273, 277, 282 

Smith, G. B., quoted, 368, 588, 594, 
602, 604, 608, 685, 698, 709 

" Snow-Bound " quoted, 648, 728 

11 Snow Storm, The," quoted, 522 

41 Song " (Bryant) quoted, 569 

Song (Lowell) quoted, 615 

Sonnet (Keats) quoted, 313, 324 

Sonnet (Shelley) quoted, 364 

Sonnets (Wordsworth) quoted, 467 

" Sordello," quoted, 690 

Southey quoted, 447 

"Spanish Student, The," quoted, 
632, 651 

Spedding, J. R., quoted, 803 

Spenser, adulation by, 82 ; artificial- 
ity of, 51 ; beauty, his perception 
of, 61 ; bibliography of criticism 
on, 43-44 ; biographical outline of, 
38-43 ; characteristics of, 44-88 ; 
diffuseness of, 73 ; exquisite melo- 
dy of, 57 ; flattery by, 82 ; idealism 
of. 44 ; imagination, his rich, 44 ; 
incongruity of, 51 ; license, his ver- 
bal, 78 ; melody, his exquisite, 57 ; 
moral elevation of, 66 ; particular 
characteristics of, 44-88 ; percep- 
tion of beauty by, 61 ; pictorial 
power of, 85 ; reverence of, for 



womanhood, 70 ; rich imagination 
of, 44 ; sensitiveness of, 61 ; verbal 
license of, 78 ; womanhood, his rev- 
erence for, 70 
" Sphinx, The," quoted, 514, 529 
" Spirit of Poetry, The," quoted, 634 
Spofford, H. P., quoted, 727, 731, 

735. 739- 744, 748, 75° 
" Spring " quoted, 832 
" Squiere's lale, The," quoted, 27 
" St. Agnes, The Eve of," quoted, 

304 
" Stanzas on Freedom " quoted, 589 
" Stanzas on the Prospect of Death " 

quoted, 250 
Stead, W. T., quoted, 608, 787 
Ste. Beuve, quoted, 171, 196, 198, 

257, 259, 260, 262, 265, 271, 280 
" St. Cecilia's Day," Dryden's Song 

for, quoted, 146 
" St. Cecilia's Day," Pope's ode on, 

quoted, 176 
Stedman, E. C, quoted, 401, 420, 
426, 434, 441, 504, 508, 509, 512, 514, 
515, 518, 520, 521, 524, 550, 563, 583, 
590, 591, 594, 596, 602, 606, 610, 613, 
631, 632, 634, 636, 638, 640, 642, 644, 
647, 649, 650, 656, 680, 683, 687, 691, 
702, 708, 726, 731, 734, 737, 739, 740, 
742, 746, 748, 751, 766, 769, 773, 77q, 
791, 792, 799, 815, 818, 820, 822, 825, 
828, 830, 83 f, 836, 838, 840, 842, 843 
Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 171, 180, 
183, 186, 191, 196, 200, 205, 260, 
265, 268, 271, 273, 277, 339, 423, 
437, 445, 465, 470, 477, 480 , 482, 
815 
Stevenson, R. L. , quoted, 226, 233, 

240, 243 
Stillman, W. J., quoted, 601 
Stirling, J., quoted, 780, 796, 801 
Stoddard, R. H., quoted, 26, 35, 304, 
312, 315, 557, 561, 563, 565, 570, 
572, 597, 649, 654, 727, 731, 739, 
744. 748, 777, 793 
11 Strange Lady, The," quoted, 558 
4k Submission " quoted, 283 
Suggestions to Teachers, n-14 
"Summer, A," quoted, 732 
"Summer Wind, The," quoted, 558 
44 Summons, The," quoted, 751 
41 Sun and Shadow " quoted, 833 
44 Sun-Day Hymn, A," quoted, 835 
44 Sunset, The," quoted, 342 
" Sursum Cor da," quoted, 508 
Swinburne, A. C, quoted, 237, 303, 
312, 323, 325, 340, 342, 359, 385, 
400, 420. 422, 425, 430, 432, 439, 

443, 45o. 465, 473, 475, 480, 483. 
490, 768, 780, 782 



858 



INDEX 



Symonds, J. A., quoted, 104, 343, 

346, 349, 357. 3 6 3> 3 6 5- 39L 39 6 . 
401, 405, 473, 485, 682, 688, 690, 
6 94, 697, 700, 704, 708, 712 

"Tact " quoted, 520 

Taine quoted, 9, 19, 24, 33, 47, 52, 
64. 70, 75, 81, 85, 101, 105, 109, 
114, 117, 120, 124, 127, 137, 145, 
148, 150, 152, 158, 161, 170, 173, 
J75, 1 79< i 8 3, 188, 189, 220, 223, 
237, 243, 248, 257, 275, 340, 351, 
386, 391, 393- 398, 400, 405, 467, 
475. 477. 487, 493, 494, 767. 778, 
779, 783, 784 

" Tale of the Man of Lawe, The," 
quoted, 10, 15, 17 

" Tales of a Wayside Inn" quoted, 
641, 650 

Talfourd, T N., quoted, 420, 449, 

467, 47o, 481, 490 
" Tarn O'Shanter " quoted, 228 
" Tarbolton Lasses " quoted, 228, 

244 
"Task, The," quoted, 257, 258, 258, 
260, 266. 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 
283, 285, 287 
Taylor, B., quoted, 551, 553, 559, 
569, 636, 734, 742, 745, 777, 783, 
788, 832, 840 
" Teares of the Muses, The," quot- 
ed, 69 
"Telling the Bees " quoted, 728 
"Tell's Birthplace " quoted, 443 
Tennyson, bibliography of criticism 
on, 764-766 ; biblical flavor of, 
789 ; biographical outline of, 755- 
763 ; commonplace, his ornamen- 
tation of, 781 ; diction, biblical, of, 
789 ; dramatic power of, 792 ; ele- 
vation, moral, of, 784 ; exquisite 
finish of, 773 ; finish, his exquisite, 
773 ; ideal portraiture of, 766 ; mi- 
croscopic observation of, 794 ; 
moral elevation of, 784 ; nature, his 
peculiar attitude toward, 794 ; ob- 
servation, his microscopic, 794 ; 
occasional passion of, 779 ; opti- 
mism of, 784 ; ornamentation of 
the commonplace by, 780 ; ornate- 
ness of, 781 ; particular character- 
istics of, 766-804 ; passion of, oc- 
casional, 779 ; pathos of, 803 ; 
peacefulness of, 799 ; peculiar atti- 
tude of, toward nature, 794; pict- 
uresqueness of, 768 ; portraiture, 
his ideal, 766 ; regret, infinite, of, 
790 ; repose of, 799 ; tenderness 
of, 803 ; vehemence of, 779 ; yearn- 
ing of, 790 



"Thanatopsis " quoted, 560, 644 
"Three Friends of Mine" quoted, 

651 
"Thy Will Be Done " quoted, 736, 

74i 
Times, London, quoted, 585 
" Tintern Abbey, Lines on Revisit- 
ing," quoted, 483 
" Tirocinium " quoted, 270, 279 
" To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet " 

quoted, 244 
41 To an Insect " quoted, 824 
"To a Virtuous Young Lady " quot- * 

ed, 116 
"To Constantia Singing" quoted, 

37i 
" To Hope " quoted, 313 
"To-morrow" (Shelley) quoted, 

347 
" To the Lord Chancellor " quoted, 

358 
Traill, H. D. , quoted, 420, 441, 597, 

771 
"Trust " quoted, 736 
Tuckerman, H. T., quoted, 175, 181, 

197, 220, 234, 237, 259, 271, 273, 

277, 286, 307, 325, 340, 348, 355, 

356, 359. 363, 365. 435- 44i, 487. 

55i. 559, 561, 567. 569. 570, 572, 

77i, 775, 783, 797, 799 
"Twa Dogs, The," quoted, 236 
"Twa Herds, The," quoted, 239 
"Twilight," quoted, 656 
"Two Voices, The," quoted, 802 

" Under the Violets " quoted. 829 

" Under the Willows" quoted, 607, 
607 

Underwood, F. H. , quoted, 510, 516, 
585, 588, 590, 593, 595, 599, 602, 
604, 606, 633. 646, 651, 654, 727, 
73°, 734, 736, 7A7, 818, 820, 823, 
828, 830, 835, 836, 838, 840, 842 

" Unhappy Lot, The, of Mr. Knott," 
quoted, 600 

" Universal Prayer, The," quoted, 
201 

" Up at a Villa" quoted, 707 

" Urania " quoted, 821, 830, 844 

" Uriel ' quoted, 514 

"Valediction " quoted, 261 

Van Dyke, H., quoted, 103, 106, no, 

114, 312, 323, 776, 785. 789, 794 
"Village Blacksmith, The," quoted, 

646, 657 
" Virgil's Gnat " quoted, 87 
"Vision of Judgment, A," quoted, 

395. 399 
" Voiceless, The," quoted, 829 



INDEX 



859 



"Voice of the Loyal North, A,' 

quoted, 836 
" Voices of the Night " quoted, 643 
"Voluntaries " quoted, 507 

"Walk at Sunset, A," quoted, 555, 

S64 
" Waltz, The," quoted, 406 
Ward, T. H., quoted, 9, 13, 15, 17, 

27, 257, 262, 264, 268 
Warton, T., quoted, 28 
" Waterfowl, To A," quoted, 573 
" Weariness " quoted, 635 
Wendell, B., quoted, 727, 734, 752 
"Westminster Abbey, For one who 
would not be Buried in," quoted, 
196 
M West Wind, Ode to the," (Shelley) 

quoted, 369 
"What I Have Come For" quoted, 

817 
Whipple, E. P., quoted, 46, 59, 62, 
67. 7°, 73, 79, 82, 85, 301, 306, 317, 
321, 350, 354, 356, 361, 386, 389, 
392, 395, 397, 4°2, 407, 409, 422, 
426, 429, 435, 461, 465, 468, 473, 
475, 477, 482, 484, 486, 488, 49°. 
493, 494, 503, 506, 507, 5", 5*2, 
516, 523, 526, 549, 552, 555, 559, 
560, 562, 567, 630, 633, 638, 640, 
644, 646, 649, 651, 654, 694, 727, 
729. 733< 746, 770. 778, 79 6 - 816, 
820, 823, 824, 826, 831, 833 
White, R. G., quoted, 680, 685, 708 
Whitman, W., quoted, 219, 635 
Whittier, artlessness of, 752 ; ballad- 
making, his genius for, 745 ; bibli- 
cal imagery of, 751 ; bibliography 
of criticism on, 724-725 ; bio- 
graphical outline of, 714-724 ; con- 
secration of, 739 ; dexterous use 
of proper names by, 750; faith of, 
732; fervor, his religious, 732; 
genius of, for ballad-making, 745 ; 
homely beauty of, 725 ; humani- 
tarianism of, 736 ; idyllic flavor of, 
725 ; imagery, his biblical, 751 ; 
inspiration of, 739 ; lyrical power 
of, 745 ; moral energy of, 729 ; 
nationalism of, 741 ; piety of, 732 ; 
power of characterization of, 747 ; 
particular characteristics of, 725- 
754; proper names, his dexterous 
use of, 750 ; quoted as critic, 234 
556, 655, 815, 820, 824, 828, 828, 
834 ; religious fervor of, 732 ; sec- 
tionalism of, 741 ; simplicity of, 
752 ; sympathy of, 736 
Wilson, J. G., quoted, 235, 559, 743, 
746 



Wilson, M., quoted, 706 
Wilson, Professor, quoted, 71, 83, 
224, 230, 243, 245, 449, 470, 475, 
564, 767 
Winchester, C. T., quoted, 605 
" Window, The," quoted, 778 
"Windsor Forest" quoted, 182 
"Winter" (Burns), quoted, 250 
Winter, W., quoted, 655, 831, 840 
" Witch's Daughter, The," quoted, 

728 
Woodbury, G. E. , quoted, 260, 273, 
275, 282, 285, 303, 323, 366, 436, 
608, 612, 614, 726, 731, 734, 742, 
746, 748, 751, 752, 836, 838, 840, 
844 
11 Woodnotes " quoted, 512, 521, 

526 
Wordsworth, appreciative sympathy 
of, 468 ; bibliography of criticism 
on, 459, 461 ; biographical outlines 
of, 452, 458 ; characteristics, his 
particular, 461, 496 ; contemplation 
of, 465 ; delicate sense of sound, 
his, 474 ; didacticism of, 493 ; dul- 
ness of, 480 ; early puerility of, 
480 ; elevation, his moral, 476 ; ex- 
aggeration his, of the trivial, 486 ; 
freshness of, 488 ; grandeur of, 
494 ; heaviness of, 480 ; imagina- 
tive power of, 481 ; love of nature, 
his. 468 ; meditation, his profound, 
465 ; moral elevation of, 476 ; nat- 
ure, his love of, 468 ; originality 
of, 488 ; particular characteristics 
of, 461-496 ; pathos of, 490 ; pro- 
found meditation of, 465 ; puerility, 
his early, 486 ; quoted as critic, 
115, 221, 449, 773 ; self-esteem of, 
472 ; self-reflection of, 472 ; sense 
of sound, his delicate, 474 ; seren- 
ity of, 494 ; severe simplicity of, 
461 ; simplicity, his severe, 461 ; 
stateliness of, 404 ; sympathy, his 
appreciative, 468 ; sympathy, his, 
with humanity, 483 
"World's Convention," Whittier to, 

quoted, 751 
"World-Soul, liie," quoted, 514, 

521 
"Written with a Pencil," etc., 
quoted, 241 

" Yellow Violet, The," quoted, 

554 
" Young Lady, To a," quoted, 439, 

442 
" Young Friend, To a," quoted, 429 
" Youth and Age " quoted, 446, 

712 



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